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Making
Online Ads Click
(The Standard, December 11, 2000)
Advertisers have tried everything from banners to sponsorships.
Here's what's working.
By
Stacy Lawrence
The
health of the online advertising market has been a hot topic among
financial and industry analysts. But beyond the issue of questionable
company revenues and profits, only a few researchers have examined
how well the online ads themselves perform. Hard evidence about
the success of online campaigns – and the relative effectiveness
of these ads vs. offline options – remains largely in the hands
of advertisers. The findings of a few new studies, however, suggest
that something is going right in an industry that grew 74 percent
this year.
Site
sponsorships account for more than one-quarter of the online ad
market, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. The findings
of an ongoing study by media consultant Next Century Media suggest
these investments are paying off: Viewers of a sponsored site are
more likely to consider a purchase of the sponsor's product. However,
the study also found that these sponsorships had little impact on
brand perception.
Market
researcher Ipsos-ASI found that the more heavily distributed a sponsor's
message is throughout a site, the more easily visitors will remember
the brand. Not surprisingly, if a sponsor's partnership statement
appears on every page of a site, viewers are more than twice as
likely to remember the brand than when it's displayed just on the
homepage. The strongest impact on brand recognition resulted when
the sponsor's logo and a picture of the product appeared on every
page of the site.
Streaming-media
ads are also effective in branding. A study by Millward Brown Interactive
found that streaming-media ads were almost five times more effective
in creating recall for a given ad than simple Web banners. The much-maligned
banner still comprises half of online ad spending, but that's down
from 59 percent a year ago. And Nielsen NetRatings finds that banner
click-through rates are hovering around a measley 0.5 percent of
at-home surfers and 0.25 percent of at-work surfers.
Recent
evidence suggests, however, that the success of banner ads cannot
be measured by click-throughs alone. Almost one-third of all ad-driven
"conversion events" – either a purchase, registration
or other marketing objective – at an advertiser site happened
after surfers viewed, but did not click on, a banner ad, according
to AdKnowledge. But when surfers do click on ads, results come quickly.
Sixty-one percent of conversion events that occur after surfers
click on an ad are within the first half-hour. Almost three-quarters
of conversion events happen anywhere from one to 30 days later when
surfers simply view an ad. And increases in brand awareness among
banner ad viewers peak after only seven or more exposures to the
ad, finds a case study from ad agency OgilvyOne.
Banners
do appear to encourage repeat buying: Nearly half of the people
who see a banner ad and take action at the site have done so before.
But the success of these ads depends heavily on the product. According
to Information Resources, banner ad campaigns created a 19 percent
lift in sales of items bought on impulse despite a dismal click-through
rate of 0.27 percent.
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