• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 8, 2009

A new report to be released today by the Online Publishing Association found that ad effectiveness scores on premium content sites were numerically higher than on the Web in general. Those conclusions were drawn after analyzing independent Dynamic Logic MarketNorms data.

"The results show that ads on what the OPA considers to be higher-quality ad environments are more effective with consumers," said Pam Horan, president of the Online Publishing Association. "Quality was a key point of differentiation."

The strong showing for these sites swept across nearly all measurements and outscored industry norms for the Internet in 47 out of 47 advertising metrics.

The new report, "Improving Ad Performance Online," is the second in a series of OPA reports leveraging Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms database.

Both reports look at ad effectiveness scores for high-quality, original content sites, compared with those for overall MarketNorms, portals and ad networks .p> Since the first report in July, aided brand awareness scores on OPA member sites have increased 38%, while scores on ad networks have declined 19%.

Similarly, brand favorability scores for OPA member sites have risen 27%, while ad networks, portals and MarketNorms have dropped 29%, 17% and 6%, respectively.

The new data also shows that younger audiences (18- to-34-year-olds) are about twice as likely to form favorable opinions about advertised brands on OPA member sites than on portals and MarketNorms.

"We found the data regarding younger audiences particularly interesting because of their social networking activity," Horan added.

And the same trend holds true for affluent audiences, where OPA member sites are estimated to be 94% more effective at impacting brand favorability than MarketNorms, and 118% more effective at impacting brand awareness.