Living in a digital world

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Every impression counts

The digital advertising industry is built on servers that deliver and track the ads through to (hopefully) a sale on clients’ websites. This system judges the last click (mostly coming from google) as being responsible for the sale.

The thing is, as a recent Ad Age article points out, this measurement system ignores the journey any individual user has taken on their way to that sale. And the truth is usually that the user has been exposed to multiple ads on their journey to the sale. That Google is the final steps doesn’t mean that those previous exposures weren’t all important. The challenges for digital marketers is to measure which ads are incidental and which are most effective/responsible for driving to an eventual sale.

All the latest research seems to suggest that ‘Search’ is being given far too much credit. AQuantive’s Atlas (now owned by Microsoft and a competitor to Doubleclick owned by Google) have studied conversion data and user behavior collected by cookies and found that nearly all advertisers give too much emphasis to “the last click” for leading to sales. Instead, the Atlas study found two-thirds of customers who took actions on advertiser Web sites were reached multiple times by ads on several sites.

In fact they found searchers who were first exposed to a brand’s display ads converted 22 percent more often.

What does this mean? Simple, search does work, but brands are being short-sighted by focusing the bulk of their online spend in this area. They’d get better results by supporting search with more investment in online display advertising.

The study backs this argument up by showing that 30 percent of users reached on multiple sites accounted for a disproportionate 69 percent of conversions. For digital marketers this is interesting because it suggests that online awareness advertising is an effective part of online campaigns. Indeed Avenue A/Razorfish now apportion the last click only 60% credit for a sale and spread the rest to prior ad interactions.

June 13, 2007 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

UK has the most “active” online population in Europe – and our ‘Silver Surfers’ are on the up

ComScore’s detailed review of pan-European online activity was released last week, providing a unique comparison of how web use varies by country.

Based on data from April 2007, the ‘average European’ aged 15+ accessed the Internet 16.5 days over the month and spent a total of 24 hours viewing 2,662 Web pages – or 161 pages each day they were online.

Germany turns-out to have the largest online population, at 32.6m compared to the UK’s 21.8m. However, we apparently have the most active online population, accessing the net an average of 21 days over the month and spending 34.4 hours viewing 3,440 pages. That’s an average of 98 minutes and 164 pages viewed each day online.

Further insight into the fast evolving UK online population comes in the May 2007 online demographics update from Hitwise UK. This suggests that UK Internet users aged 55+ are coming close to equaling the 35 to 44 age group in terms of representation online.

In the four weeks to 12 May 2007, the so-called ‘Silver Surfer’ 55+ group accounted for 22% of UK visits to all categories of websites – compared to 23.5% coming from 35 to 44 year olds.

Based on the share of the UK population in different age bands, this still leaves the 55+ group with less than half the penetration of Internet use seen in the 15 to 54 age bands. However, this is growing fast and the research provides a handy reminder to ensure that we think twice before assuming a misleadingly young view of online consumers when briefing and developing web communications.

June 13, 2007 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

   

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