The combined impact of Display and Search advertising

Posted by: tedmonds

19 May 2009

The idea of running a multi channel campaign to drive a better combined return shouldn't be a new concept to marketers. However it is not uncommon for a client to employ one agency to manage one channel whilst another agency manages another and never the twain shall meet.

Although different channels are in play it is difficult to provide a holistic view because the focus is on the parts and not the sum. However when you get the chance to test the affect that different channels have on one another, the results are revealing. This article will focus specifically on the affect that online display advertising has on search marketing and relates to a recent case study produced by dgm.

Most case studies in this area are quite old hence the need for dgm to produce something more up to date. Probably the most widely publicised case study was conducted by Atlas in 2006. In this study Atlas analysed eleven advertisers over one month to measure the affect that display and search had on overall site conversion. In this study users exposed to both display and search converted 22% higher than those exposed to search alone.

Yahoo conducted a similar study with comScore across four industry sectors to study the same synergy, focusing on the impact search and display had on:

1. levels of engagement

2. offline and online purchases

With the advertisers studied there was an average 68% lift in page views and 66% lift in time spent on site. The same study showed a 244% lift in online purchases when search and display were combined as opposed to 210% for search sales

Sales and site engagement are not the only metrics that can and should be analysed. The brand impact of display on search shouldn't be ignored. dgm ran a test to see what impact a display campaign would have for a specific client’s brand. As a control the advertiser did not run any advertising other than the display campaign for the five week test. In this period display volumes were phased throughout each week to see the effect they would have on brand. This effect was measured by viewing click and search volumes around the advertiser’s branded PPC campaign.

Clearly there was a correlation between customers seeing the display advertising and being driven to conduct a brand search via Google and Yahoo. This can be seen in the graph below that shows how branded PPC searches (seen as 'Brand Imps') increase and decrease as display impressions increase and decrease (seen as 'Display Imps').

In the two periods where display impressions were decreased there was a direct correlation in the drop of sales generated by this client’s branded search campaign:

Tuesday to Wednesday - 21% drop in display impressions resulted in a 40% drop in branded search sales

Friday to Saturday – 28% drop in display impressions resulted in a 63% drop in branded search sales

The results demonstrated in this case study provides a very powerful argument for combining more than one channel, whether your focus is: site engagement, sales, brand uplift or any combination of the above. At a time when budgets are being scrutinised and in many instances slashed, every step should be taken to justify and measure these types of cross channel impacts, so that a truer picture of channel value can be understood.

TrackBacks

Return to dgm Online Marketing Blog Main Page

RSS Feed

Share on Facebook

Bookmark this on Delicious

Subscribe in a reader

Blog Categories

The combined impact of Display and Search advertising

RSS Feed

Share

Recent Posts