New research proves online ads do contribute to brand metrics.
As we reported in a news item earlier this week, Dynamic Logic has released new research data proving that online advertising can drive a 24 percent boost in message association, as well as significant increases in other branding metrics. While the study centered on Yahoo!, the data offer good news for the Internet as a whole.
The research analysis, using Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms database of more than one million completed AdIndex surveys, provides quantifiable evidence that online advertising not only has a positive effect on brand awareness, but that it can also influence consumer purchasing decisions. The MarketNorms database, which contains survey data about more than 10,000 online advertisements, provides tracking and trending data, comparing the brand perceptions of consumers who were exposed to online advertisements to those who were not.
The database also provides a benchmark for measuring impact across five key metrics: brand awareness, ad awareness, message association, brand favorability and purchase intent. Across these five, online advertising improved brand strength among consumers by six to 42 percent compared to brand strength among consumers not exposed to the online campaigns.
"Historically, the conventional wisdom in the industry is that the primary role of Internet advertising was to drive immediate action online by the consumer, whereas the branding benefits have not been as well recognized or understood as the direct marketing advantages," says Wenda Harris Millard, chief sales officer, Yahoo!. "This research shows that online advertising provides significant brand lift across all of the key metrics, further underscoring that online advertising should be an important component of every branding campaign and can be used stand-alone or as a complement to other forms of media."
According to Dynamic Logic, Yahoo! tested more than 80 campaigns across a variety of verticals including CPGs, automotive companies, financial institutions, and so on. Examples of campaigns that experienced brand lift include one for Doritos and one for the U.S. Treasury.
Doritos' "Soundbites on Live@Launch" campaign generated increases in all awareness metrics, and exceeded overall Internet norms in brand awareness, online ad awareness, brand favorability, and purchase intent.
The U.S. Treasury worked with Yahoo! to measure the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's campaign to launch the new $20 bill, which created significant increases in awareness of the campaign and its messages and message association. The campaign helped to build rapid awareness and immediate acceptance of the new $20 bills in addition to building awareness for the three key security features that would serve in educating the public on how to authenticate their new $20 bills.
“The significance of the findings is that online advertising is working for branding, which bodes well for larger advertisers,” says Christina Goodman, a spokesperson for Dynamic Logic.
This research supports previous studies. Last May, for example, Lightningcast Inc. partnered with Microsoft and Dynamic Logic to quantify the impact of an Internet ad campaign for the Hyundai Tiburon automobile that ran on the Lightningcast network of interactive broadcasting sites. The study showed that online video advertising succeeded in significantly increasing awareness.
Similarly, in April, Information Resources, Inc. and DoubleClick Inc. released data that showed online advertising can positively influence consumer perceptions of brands and increase offline sales by an average of 6.6 percent for consumer packaged goods.
Also last year, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) released a white paper that outlines how advertising on quality, content-driven sites outperforms industry norms on every measure of brand awareness and persuasion.
Indeed, this week’s Dynamic Logic survey reveals advertising on Yahoo! performed better in raising awareness than online advertising in general. Based on more than 80 campaigns, advertising on Yahoo! scored 30 to 37 percent better than campaigns across the Internet as a whole, according to MarketNorms Q3 2003 data.
"MarketNorms provides benchmarks for the industry to evaluate the effectiveness of their online ads, allowing them to be smarter marketers," says Margaret Hung, Dynamic Logic's director of research services. "We measure a large number of online campaigns, and find that media placement is a strong determinant of campaign success. This data shows that on average ads on Yahoo! outperform industry norms in raising brand awareness."
Typically, it is more difficult to move the needle on the two metrics measuring consumer persuasion (brand favorability and purchase intent). Even here, however, publishing environment can make a difference. The research showed, for example, that automotive ads on Yahoo! outperformed MarketNorms' benchmarks in both these metrics. Yahoo! Automotive campaigns for Q3 2003 (which included 10 ad campaigns) increased brand favorability by six percent (compared to three percent lift for online advertising overall) and raised purchase intent by five percent (compared to four percent lift for online advertising overall).
Blake Chandlee, category development officer for consumer packaged goods at Yahoo! attributes this to Yahoo’s balanced approach of bringing advertisers and consumers together. “It’s about understanding your consumers and their priorities and balancing that with advertisers needs,” he says. This enables relevancy, the key for successful online advertising.
Dynamic Logic’s Goodman agrees. “Having a proper balance between content and advertising, a targeted audience and editorial context contributes to better ad performance,” she says.
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