Consumers still prefer traditional media such as TV and print, DoubleClick's Rick Bruner told iMedia Agency Summit attendees.

"I'd like to see a show of hands," Rick Bruner, director of research at DoubleClick, told the attendees at the iMedia Agency Summit. "How many people have had this experience: You go to a cocktail party with friends who don't work in interactive marketing, and someone asks you what you do. When you tell them, they immediately say, 'Oh, you make pop-up ads; I hate those.'"

While most attendees grudgingly confessed to being painted with the pop-up brush, Bruner offered hope, explaining that while pop-ups had burnt themselves out in terms of effectiveness; advertising in general is still looked upon in favorable terms by consumers.

"The story of what people really think about ads may not be as dire as you think," he said. "It's actually a lot more nuanced and more positive."

With that, Bruner delved into the tea leaves generated from a recent DoubleClick consumer survey titled "Ad Attitudes: How People Really Feel About Advertising."

Although it may not have been music to the attendees' ears, Bruner began by pointing out that consumers still prefer traditional media such as TV and print when it comes to driving purchase decisions based on ads. But, he pointed out, interactive advertising has a more significant impact on the youth demographic.

While Bruner said those findings aren't all that surprising, he highlighted what he sees as a possible flaw in the online ad model.

"Magazines don't have ads on every page, and TV doesn't have ads broadcast over its content," he said. "But for some reason there's this perception that every web page has to have at least one ad on it. That's one of my biggest regrets for this industry. I wish we had a model that had one high-impact ad and then several pages of uninterrupted programming."

As an example of the need to control saturation, Bruner explained that the much heralded demise of the 30-second TV spot might not only be premature, it might also be foolhardy, given the positive perception consumers have regarding that form of marketing.

"We asked people to tell us what three forms of promotions they would eliminate from their lives if they could," Bruner told the crowd. "It's scary to think that pop-ups actually beat telemarketing, and interactive ads accounted for three of the top four most reviled forms of advertising."

Spam emails and floating ads joined the No. 1 pop-ups, and coming in at No. 2, telemarketing was the least favored means of advertising from a consumer perspective.

But the fact that interactive ads accounted for three of the top four negative advertising experiences for consumers doesn't mean automatic bad news for the industry, Bruner explained.

"We asked the same question in reverse," he said. "While people much prefer recommendations from friends, opt-in email actually came in second."

TV ads and catalogues rounded out the top four.

According to Bruner, one reason for the popularity of traditional ads is that they aren't nearly as intrusive as some forms of interactive marketing.

"If you don't want the floating ad to go the way of the pop-up, you need to think about how often you use that type of ad and where you use it," he said.

While traditional media continues to play a huge role in advertising, according to Bruner, one critical thing to remember about interactive marketing is that it drives people into stores. In other words, Bruner stressed the indirect -- and as-yet nearly impossible to measure -- impact of online marketing, over more obvious, but perhaps less critical, metrics for ROI.

"Consumers across the board are as likely to solicit product information online as they are to avoid ads," Bruner said, adding that 67 percent of those who responded said they often see an online ad and then follow-up by going to see the product in the store. Sixty-one percent of respondents said online ads often drove them to return to an advertiser's website at a later time, even if they never clicked on the original ad.

In other words, online ads can and do drive sales, but not always where online marketers think those sales will occur.

"The indirect value of interactive marketing outweighs what we can track with today's methodology," Bruner said.

Turning to emerging media, Bruner had good news for interactive marketers.

"What we found is that the majority of people are willing to accept some kind of ad model across all emerging channels," Bruner said. "But the more personal the channel is -- the closer it is to the user's pocket like a cell or an MP3 player -- the less likely they are to respond positively to ad-supported content. By comparison, ads are widely accepted on channels like RSS and social networking."

Michael Estrin is the associate editor at iMedia Connection. Read full bio.