The Blog on Branding

Increasing the Hype on Digital Advertising

It’s 2009 – everyone’s online… Get with the program! Over 75% of Americans either have Internet access in their home or have a place where they can go to access it, and the majority of Web surfing is interrupted with pop-up ads, banner ads, e-mail spam, and more. As much as it can seem annoying, it’s effective in creating consumer awareness and getting a company’s name on the map.

“The internet is littered with the same logos that inhabit billboards and magazines.”

The Big Picture

We can already calculate the number of consumers clicking on online advertisement to gauge their success rate, while also acknowledging the uproar created by bloggers, but what marketers and ad agencies have to understand is the broader picture: What makes Web-Ad campaigns succeed?

Since companies and firms are so focused on conventional marketing methods to the individual consumer, through print and commercial ads, they tend to lose sight of the power of digital marketing. Making use of online advertisements not only reach a wider population, but still keep the focus on the individual consumers. An eMarketer Article entitled, Online Advertising Pushes Through, advocates the rise of Web-ad campaigns and anticipates online spending to increase over the next 4 years.

Generating the Buzz

According to Forrester Research, as of now, the average marketer spends only 9.9% of its budget on online advertising and because “digital [marketing] is young,” says Emily Riley, an analyst at Forrester, firms and organizations are reluctant to dump any more of their spending into it.

Since the recent WPP-Google merger, outlined in the Wall Street Journal Article, WPP, Google to Fund Wed-Ad Research, research has began to explore the success of online advertising. WPP, world leader in marketing communications, and Google, number one online resource tool, have teamed up to revolutionize the way traditional ads work with digital media to ultimately influence consumer behaviors. Their three-year program backed by a $4.6 million investment will begin their first round of research at such accredited institutions like Harvard Business school, MIT and Standford University.

The data will be retrieved from some of WPP and Google’s top clients, such as major advertisers like Unilever and Ford, which will offer up-to-date information and numbers on pressing issues concerning the online market.

Such pressing issues include:

1. Determining the best way to allocate funds between traditional ads and online ads.
2. How online ads affect a company’s sales and brand image.
3. How the physical display and graphics of Web-ads affect consumer behavior.
4. Psychological and neurological analysis of how the brain determines whether web advertisements are relevant.

Not only will their merger begin research on digital marketing strategies and campaigns, but it will persuade companies and their marketers to spend more than just a small fraction of their budgets for online advertising campaigns.

A Professional Approach

Glen Urban, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management proposed research in the cognitive area of study by sampling online surfers and determining how their habits influence their thinking styles. By researching whether someone is more drawn toward a verbal message than a visual message, marketers can tailor their ads according to the prospective market.

“A phone company promoting a new long-distance calling plan, for example, might show a holistic thinker an ad with a slogan like ‘Reach Out to the World,’ with an image of two people reaching toward each other across the globe. An analytical thinker might get the same slogan but with bullet points highlighting the plan’s features.”

On the other hand, Martin Reiman, a psychologist, from the University of South California, has a different perspective on research. He plans to examine the role of emotions in the decision-making process and how advertisements influence those decisions. By studying the areas where blood flows, physiologists can determine when a consumer is stressed out, excited, overwhelmed or affected at all by any given ad.

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