Measure Online Display Ad Effectiveness to Determine Full Effect of Campaign
The problem with the use of click-through rates as the sole measure of online display advertising effectiveness is that CTR ignores a host of other ‘view-thru’ advertising effectiveness measures that impact roi, including recall, purchase intent, awareness, etc.A recent ComScore post reflects the opinion of many online publishers, advertisers and agencies, by asserting that display ad effectiveness measurement should consider view-thru metrics that provide marketers with “an understanding of what consumers are doing, not just saying, in the days and weeks after seeing display ads, and have an understanding of the volume of search activity that is being driven by ad exposure.”
Certainly CTR can be useful, such as comparing the performance of creative executions. But the value of the CTR metric has been overemphasized by some online ad sellers seeking to grab spend from traditional media by emphasizing the performance and interactivity of online advertising. And let’s face it – for advertisers hungry for proof of roi, CTR is easy to understand, even if it doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s easy to see how online advertising has become a one-click pony. Sorry.
What’s a marketer to do? For advertisers that can afford it, there are plenty of custom research options to help them analyze the effectiveness of their display ad campaigns. Or, if you run display advertising campaigns on the Google Content Network you can utilize their “View-through conversion reporting” to measure how well your compaign increased brand awareness and purchase consideration, in “those instances where your ad is seen, but not immediately clicked on. More specifically, View-through Conversion reporting measures the number of conversions that occurred within 30 days of your display ad appearing for which there was no ad click generated.”
Google also offers advertisers access to Campaign Insights , “a unique measurement tool that can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness, or active user interest, in a particular product or service. It looks beyond the traditional measures of clicks and conversions to calculate the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits that result from a display ad campaign.” Campaign Insights compares two data sets from thousands of consumers who both did and did not see the ads, while also filtering out the impact of other media influences, such as TV.
Analyzing online display advertising beyond clicks makes sense for advertisers who want to build sustainable revenue and brands.
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