In the days before digital, salesmen of yellow pages had an unbeatable line: "Ask your customers how they got your number." They knew that no matter how much money was invested in radio, print, and TV advertising, many customers turned to the yellow pages for a business's phone number as their last stop before calling.
Just like the last click, the yellow pages over-represented the true value of their share of conversions. Moreover, it was clear that, in many cases, the call generated from the yellow pages was triggered by an ad seen elsewhere. Today, the modern equivalent of the yellow page is the search engine. Marketers are drawn by the ability of search to pull prospective customers located at the bottom of the marketing funnel, who are actively looking for their product. Since these consumers have signaled their desire or interest by actively typing a keyword, they are far more likely to convert as compared to other prospects at the upper levels of the funnel.
The purchase funnel
When a campaign needs to be scaled beyond the number of prospective customers that can be solicited through search, display advertising comes into play. Search works on the lower parts of the purchase funnel by targeting consumers in the consideration stage or in the intent to purchase stage and pushes them to complete their conversion. On the other hand, display works on all stages of the funnel, bringing new customers into the purchasing funnel through awareness, while the impact of the engagement with the creative ushers prospects through favorability, consideration, and intent to purchase.
In the pull strategy used by search, customers are only solicited deep in the funnel, and therefore their conversion rate tends to be high. In display, prospects might not even be in the funnel, which makes the conversion rate relatively low. As in the case of the yellow pages, search gets more than its fair share of the credit for conversions. Currently, advertisers attribute the conversion to the last click or impression. New research of global search and display cross-channel campaigns shows that nearly one in five of the conversions that are attributed to search was preceded by a display ad. Additional data demonstrate that some verticals, such as B2B and travel, focus on harvesting users already in the funnel and, therefore, have a larger portion of their conversions coming from search. On the other hand, entertainment and consumer packaged goods try to draw more users into the funnel and expand reach. Thus, they use more display advertising and receive the lion's share of their conversions through that channel.
As AdReady discusses in the white paper "Search Ads + Banner Ads: A Powerful One-Two Punch," there are limitations to search advertising that can be overcome with display. While search harvests prospective customers that are already in the purchase funnel, it reaches a limited number of people.
According to Kevin Lee, CEO at Didit, "Savvy marketers understand the interaction between search and display, and use the high reach of display to add more searchers at the uppermost levels of the purchase funnel." Lee goes on to explain that marketers should put their money first into retargeting people who have already visited the website through search or direct navigation, which he calls the "most effective use of display dollars on a marginal basis."
Conversions that resulted from display advertising followed by search are evidence of the effectiveness of display advertising. Display increases awareness and retention of the brand such that users remember the name of the brand or the company in order to search for it and get to its website. Therefore, the role of each channel is not mutually exclusive, as evidenced by the conversions that are the result of a combination of search and display.
Get your conversions up
How can you increase conversion both directly through display and through search? An analysis of hundreds of billions of impressions served by Eyeblaster shows that conversions are typically higher for advertisers that adhere to the following rules of thumbs:
- When allocating your budget, take into account that some of your display budget spills over to search. Data show that 17 percent of search conversions resulted from at least one display impression. Therefore, an increase in your display budget increases conversions both in the display and in the search channels.
- Know the vertical. Some verticals call for greater emphasis on display, while others on search. Entertainment brands look to generate awareness before pushing users down the funnel, as data indicate that 92 percent of entertainment conversions were the result of the display channel and only 8 percent the result of the search channel. The travel vertical, which targets users who are actively looking for a vacation, has a higher proportion of its conversions from search -- 54 percent -- while only 46 percent are coming from display.
- Use rich media creative with interactive and engaging content. Rich creative lures users' attention from the publishers' content to the ad and attains more than double the average conversion rate as compared to standard banners. In addition, new research by Eyeblaster and Microsoft Advertising shows that engaging ads with high dwell tend to increase brand-related keyword search.
- Place ads in environments where users spend ample time on the web page immersed in the editorial content. Environments like news and mail increase the likelihood that users will notice the ad, engage with it, and later convert. These environments also have higher dwell rates and dwell times, which increase brand-related keyword searches.
Ariel Geifman is principal analyst at Eyeblaster.
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