comScore Report on Metrics Other than Clicks for Online Ads

Read an interesting article from comScore, How Online Advertising Works: Whither The Click?, by Gian M. Fulgoni and Marie Pauline Mörn.

The white paper is an output from the Empirical Generalizations in Advertising Conference for Industry and Academia. The Empirical Generalizations in Advertising Conference has a blog with comments from the conference. (Note: Wouldn’t bother with the blog; rather dry.)

Fulgoni and Mörn report results from a study of 139 online display ad campaigns conducted across several industry verticals.

The aim of the research was to (a) focus on the lack of clicks in online ads (both content and search) and (b) propose that maybe clicks are not the only metrics that one can use.

The report first sets up the scenario that click through for online ads are declining, referencing several sources. The authors then use the data from the 139 ad campaigns to evaluate metrics other than clicks for measuring the success of these advertising campaigns.

Aside from click through, the report presents several positive impacts of these online ad campaigns, including:

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

These seem to fall in line with the dual role of advertising – direct sales or branding.

ComScore uses panel data, but what I really found interesting in this report was that some of these folks allow comScore to access third party programs (e.g., grocery card programs, frequent consumer programs, etc.). One can really do some interesting research with such a data set. It’s a really amazing resource.

There has been some criticism of the comScore data and results in the past, so it’ll be interesting to see the reaction from this report. I don’t know though. With such a rich dataset that comScore has, I just don’t see how the results could be off (assuming the data analysis methods are sound and unbiased).

You can download the How Online Advertising Works: Whither The Click?" White Paper report.