• by February 13, 2001

With Valentine's Day around the corner I felt sentimental enough to look back at last year's Valentine's Minute and instead of inspiration, found this phrase: "With the January advertising blues behind them, most ad networks are seeing a sizable boost in February and even March buys."

Funny how things change, isn't it? As I went further down the Minute Archive list, however, I found another column about the evils of self-serving research studies.

Some things never change.

GoTo.com, which calls itself a "leading provider of Pay-For- Performance search services," today released findings from a "pioneering new study" that measured the branding effect of search listings, banners and tile ads among online consumers.

Care to guess what the study found? I quote: "search listings outperformed banner and tile online ad formats with regard to brand recall, favorable opinion rating and purchase origination. In unaided recall, the top three search listings outperformed banners and tiles by three to one."

Not surprisingly, participants also reported that more of their online purchases originated from search listings than any other source. According to these respondents, 55% percent of online purchases originated on sites found through search listings compared to 9% from sites originating from banner ads and 7% through sites discovered through tile ads.

The study, had it been done by a neutral research firm without being commission by a search engine listing auctioneer, would certainly be interesting and valuable enough to use in your next media plan. But doesn't this sound a lot like "Victoria's Secret study finds women prefer lingerie for Valentine's Day more than any other gift"?

Beware of research!