FYI this is referring only to display ads. Also, I'd take this with a grain of salt since the study itself states that view-through impacts are not to be ignored.
>> FYI this is referring only to display ads. Also, I'd take this with a grain of salt since the study itself states that view-through impacts are not to be ignored.
Actually, a different study than the one linked by the OP states this. A study they are careful not to elaborate upon in this press release. I worked for StarCom 1997-2000 in their new & shiny online advertising group. StarCom is heavily incented to produce research proving the effectiveness of all types of advertising. And they own a much larger share of online display advertising than they do of paid search engine marketing. I can't prove that their current research is biased. But when I worked there, we were quite careful to present our results in the best possible light. For example, we ran a very large banner ad campaign for a Proctor & Gamble product. There were two reasonable ways to determine if it was effective: Ask an online panel if the recalled seeing the banner ads in question. Or look at the actual grocery store / drug store sales data to see if the banner campaign caused any lift in sales. The first argued that the millions spent on this campaign produced OK brand awareness; the second demonstrated that it did nothing to move the product. Guess which of these two results went into our sales and marketing materials and which was omitted.
Glad to hear I'm not the only one who's skeptical. Not that I don't believe that view-through can't provide a measurable lift--I've just seen that the splitting the marketing budget between channels can get political. And attribution based on seemingly qualitative factors feels a bit hokey to me when you can really nail down ROI on a lot of the other marketing channels.
>> I've just seen that the splitting the marketing budget between channels can get political.
One of my favorite stories involved a very successful online marketing campaign for Oldsmobile. When they launched the Alero, there was amazing testing of TV vs. Print vs. Outdoor vs. Direct Mail vs. Online. They tested for scale - how many sales were produced - and cost per channel. The results were that Online came in #2, with print a distant third. Before the test, print had a $5mm spend and online was just shy of $1mm. After the test, Olds tried to move their entire print budget into online. The agency team at Leo Burnett (LB owned StarCom at the time) that was responsible for print hit the roof and waged a successful campaign to have much of their budget restored. They didn't want to lose their jobs, I guess.
I've seen view through do some pretty amazing things first hand. It depends very heavily on the advertiser and the vertical, but in some cases it's astonishing what a few million dirt cheap impressions can do to drive sales through other channels.
