Industry leader DoubleClick Thursday became the latest firm to come out with statistics
supporting online advertising’s branding potential.
Like other players in the sector, Real Media for one, DoubleClick hopes
to bolster advertisers’ confidence with in-house studies that show
banner advertisements have a real, and measurable, return on investment (ROI).
The Alley-based Web ad network and marketing technology firm said in a
report from its new Diameter research division that a recent campaign for
the Make-A-Wish Foundation reveals a direct correlation between multiple
exposures to online ads and an increase in brand metrics.
Similarly to Real Media and other audience-measurement firms like Dynamic
Logic, DoubleClick’s Diameter methodology used survey-based tools that
examine awareness, recall, purchase intent and brand association.
Based on findings from its surveys, DoubleClick said five impressions of
Make-A-Wish’s banner boosted aided and unaided awareness of the campaign
from 16 percent to 25 percent — specifically, users remembered that they
had seen a Make-A-Wish banner around one fourth of the time. Recall of
specific creative aspects of the ads increased 126 percent after eight
exposures.
When participants were asked, “What do you remember about the ad that you
saw?”, the banner’s tagline, “All she wants this holiday season is Hope”,
increased from an awareness level of 4.2 percent to 9.5 percent.
Additionally, advertising recall increased 107 percent from a baseline
awareness of 22.8 percent to 47.1 percent after eight exposures of the
Make-A-Wish banner.
Most importantly, DoubleClick also said that awareness for the
Make-A-Wish brand increased 50 percent after eight impressions.
In all, the study had a 0.56 percent margin of error.
“As marketers continue to embrace the Web they are looking for accurate
and conclusive research to understand the effectiveness of their marketing
efforts,” said Diameter vice president and general manager Doug Knopper.
“Through the Make-A-Wish Frequency Study, we were able to demonstrate
conclusively the extent to which the Web is an effective vehicle for
branding.”
Of course, this study isn’t likely to trigger a mass shift to Web media
on its own because it was conducted in-house, and clearly presented in such a way as
to promote Diameter’s offerings. But it does contribute to the growing set
of arguments by Web firms as to why traditional, brand-oriented advertisers
should be spending more money online.
DoubleClick’s report also came on the heels of an optimistic report from
Nielsen//NetRatings, which suggested that most of the top advertisers online are
large, offline firms — good news for an industry that’s eager to wean
itself off of dot-com dollars.
