Bringing the perspective that with the average household being a bit strapped for cash at the moment, the need to hunt for a bargain is ensuring more and more people take to the web to uncover the last minute find to be had.
With a shift of emphasis from mere clicks as a way of justifying success, the report takes its perspective of this bargain hunt and helps show how online activity is a key part of a consumer’s experience in information gathering post-exposure to a marketing message, be that on or offline.
What I found interesting is, when looking at the key dates in the run up to the New Year we see a couple of spikes, one around the last-posting days for sending presents as people spend huge amounts of time online, and then in the traditional last holiday week of the year – when sales are rife. Consumers are spending up to 3 minutes per page looking for information and that means from a marketers perspective, the ability for high-impact brand exposure can be 6x the traditional 30 second TV spot, and within an environment where consumers are already in a consideration-to-purchase mode. The evidence is also seen in the number of videos started, interactions and clicks rising sharply as a result of this extra time spent on page, with no extra media cost.
With inquiry being a natural next step in the consumer life cycle following brand/product exposure, I personally find the move to merge display and search data into a seamless report the most exciting turning point for the online industry and convinced 2008 will go down as a key moment of maturity for digital advertising. Armed with ability to now see consumer paths-to-conversion, Eyeblaster has not been shy in releasing its first research into this area. The preliminary results have found staggeringly that up to 30% of clicks on paid searches happen as a result of being exposed to an online display advert first. When we consider no other media channel expects to measure an immediate result in situation, such as a click, but operate as a stop-and-think sign-post which pushes a consumer into a research/inquiry phase from another source, finding results for a display campaign success within search are for me the most logical and holistic way forward in campaign measurement.
In a media-whipped world of doom and gloom, one thing is for sure, people are looking forward to a Happy Holiday armed with bargains they have found online. In the meantime, for the rest of us who need to instil confidence in the market-place to maintain media budgets, we have been crying out for this kind of research, and I am confident those who are mature in digital advertising will equally take such a view.
Download your copy of the Eyeblaster Analytics Bulletin: Branding the Holidays now.
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