Disney Studying Which Online Ads Work Best | Post-Click Value?

July 27, 2009 | By Marc Porcelli | No Comments »

There are many ongoing debates about which online ads work best and whether the ads we view have any post-click value. Having overseen some significant multi-million dollar online advertising budgets, naturally I am familiar with what’s out there. Most media buyers ask themselves the same types of questions; do static banners work better than flash or animated banners? Should I only use 300×250 sized banners? What about frequency capping and dayparting? What about demographic targeting? Is there anything that consistently works?

The truth is every site and every placement on that site will perform differently. A placement on MySpace, in the music section will perform differently than the same placement in another section. There is never a one-stop size or a one-stop site where a banner will perform well. There is little consistency when it comes to performance and even less when it comes to the post-click value of the impression. This lack of consistency and defined value have hurt many publishers bottom lines.

Media buyers definitely have a difficult job and there are very few out there that truly have a solid grasp of the space. It is can be an expensive endeavor, but one that can also prove to be exceptionally lucrative.

Today, while reading the New York Times online I came across an interesting article. The article was written by Brooks Barnes titled, Lab Watches Web Surfers to See Which Ads Work which immediately commanded my attention. Among the questions asked in the article:

It is relatively easy for Internet companies and their advertisers to measure precisely how often Web site visitors click on advertisements, and which kinds of ads draw the most clicks. But what about those who do not click, the many millions of others whose eyes merely flit across the screen? Disney and other companies say they believe that not nearly enough is known about them — what kinds of ads in which configurations are likeliest to draw them, and hold them?

Any brand network or publisher selling advertising on a CPM will be very interested in the findings, some of which will be presented tomorrow in New York City. There are some very interesting tools that are being used in the facility that does the testing in Austin, Texas.

The tools are advanced: in addition to tracking eye movement, Dr. Varan and his 14-member team use heart-rate monitors, skin temperature readings and facial expressions (probes are attached to facial muscles) to reach conclusions.

Although these are not new technologies, the scale at which the research is being done is unprecedented. I for one am very much looking forward to what is revealed by the study.

Even armed with this data, the industry will still have to rapidly adapt to shifting media consumption patterns. We are all competing for the same increasingly ad blind users. Perhaps though we as an industry have just not kept up with all these changes, particularly at the speed of which they come!

Dr. Varan cautioned that more research was needed before the media industry caught up with the evolving way people consume its product. He equates Web advertising to the early days of television advertising, noting that networks just relied on the radio model they knew.

“Everybody is still shooting in the dark,” he said. “We’re trying to turn on the lights.”

Perhaps instead of just shouting out our messages and trying to figure out how to grab users attention, we need to engage users more through relevant messaging?

I think it’s fair to say that this is a debate that will be ongoing for some time. With the recession taking its toll on the some $25 billion in online ad dollars that will be speny this year, publishers have been closely evaluating the effectiveness of display ads, particularly post-click. This post-click value would in theory make their inventory worth more. This brings to mind the study that was released in December by comScore, How Online Advertising Works: Whither The Click? If you have not read this report, read it!

The premise is that online ads can and do generate consumer interest and actions even if people don’t actually click on them.

The results presented in this paper will show the manner in which online display ads work in affecting consumer behavior, revealing that there are indeed latency effects and branding effects even when click rates are minimal.

Other key findings of Decembers comScore report include:

  • Visitation to the advertiser’s Web site (lift of at least 46% over a four week period)
  • The likelihood of consumers conducting a search query using the advertiser’s branded terms (a lift of at least 38% over a four week period)
  • Consumers’ likelihood of buying the advertised brand online (an average 27% lift in online sales)
  • Consumers’ likelihood of buying at the advertiser’s retail store (an average lift of 17%)

Although I am not particularly fond of brand advertising (as I am in the online performance space) I would be naive to think that there was not a value to it. If the work that Disney, comScore and other researchers proves this theory correct in a definitive and scientific manner then the better it is for all of us.

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Category: Ad Networks, Advertising Agencies, Competitive Intelligence, Marketing Strategy, Media Buying, Monitization, Online Marketing

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