If you are an advertiser who wants to drive large volumes of traffic to your site, there are two important things you are probably looking for:  reach and ease of implementing your campaign.  Facebook meets these qualifications.  It is currently the third largest site online with 125MM visitors in September and it is quickly approaching parity with the #1 and #2 publishers, Google and Yahoo.

Continue reading “Dicing into Facebook Ads” »

When you take a look at online display ads today, it is usually automotive or entertainment companies that have splashy eye-catching ads.  But leave it to Apple to pave the way for more exciting ads that standout in the Tech category.  Apple has made headlines before with creative video ads aimed at attacking its rival Microsoft on the front pages of top news sites like Wall Street Journal and New York Times.  These ads first appeared almost two years ago and have since ran several more times.

Continue reading “Apple Having a Little Fun” »

According to the Google Keyword Tool,there were 7.5 million broad match searches on the term ‘soap’ in September.  Granted that some of the searches are related to “soap operas” rather than cleansing soaps, there are still quite a few people searching for the term.  CPG companies are fueling this growth in search with increased investment in online advertising.  In fact, according to TNS, one of the leading soap brands Dove spent nearly $5MM on online display advertising during the first half of this year.  This investment is significantly greater than that of rival brands Softsoap and Olay.  Due in part to their investment in online advertising, Compete’s data shows that site traffic to Dove.com are multiples greater than its competitors.

Over one million consumers visited Dove’s website in August.  This volume is comparable to the number of consumers visiting sites like Bravo TV, The New Yorker and Morningstar.  So how does Dove maintain its online visitor volume using display advertising?  Many of you have probably seen a Dove ad online recently.  We went back a few months and examined two campaigns that Dove ran on both Yahoo! and AOL in late July.  We isolated exposed consumers who saw the Dove ad and compared their behavior to a group of control consumers who did not see the ad but were otherwise similar in behavior and composition.  Take a look at the search results below.

On Yahoo!, exposed consumers were nearly twice as likely to search for the Dove brand as control consumers who did not see the ad up to a week after the campaign ended.  The ad on AOL resulted in an even greater shift in consumer behavior prompting exposed consumers to search at nearly twice the rate than those on Yahoo.  The incremental search activity for Dove is not just a sign of online success, it is also a sign of brand strength and consumer recollection. So it is no wonder that according to the Google Keyword Tool, there were 2.2 MM searches for Dove in September compared to 823K searches for Olay and 60K searches for Softsoap.  The ads did drive direct traffic to Dove’s site, but Dove got even greater value from the incremental searches and the resulting “indirect” traffic.  Here is another great example that shows that online advertising indeed works!

Last week we looked at how retail king Walmart has used online display advertising to drive growth in site visitors at a faster rate than its rivals. So far this year, Walmart has run several prominent display campaigns on high reach placements like the homepages of AOL and Yahoo!. Of course the marketing team at Walmart is savvy enough to test and vary the creative, messaging and the format of these expensive ad placements.

We took a look at two executions that Walmart used for two different one-day homepage takeovers on AOL. The first one pictured below is a non-interactive ad unit that ran in late May. A few months later in early August, Walmart ran an interactive ad also on the AOL homepage (pictured on the right below). We define an interactive ad as an ad that shows more information within the unit when a consumer clicks on it rather than immediately directing the consumer to a landing page or a website. Note that in the case of the Walmart interactive ad, it is essentially a mini circular within the ad unit. Shoppers can click on a section (i.e. Girls’ Apparel) which takes you to a different department and they can then scroll through the products. What better way to really engage shoppers in the shopping process as well as accommodate a broader spectrum of audience? So what were the results of these two campaigns?

Using the Compete Ad Impact product, we measured the online behavior of consumers exposed to the Walmart ads compared to a control group of consumers who were not exposed but were otherwise similar in behavior and composition. The comparison of the exposed behavior against a control group allows us to measure the true lift of the campaign on online behavior. For site visitation, both campaigns saw a significant increase in visits to Walmart by the exposed group compared to the control group. For the non-interactive campaign, exposed consumers were 54% more likely to visit Walmart.com compared to the control. However, the interactive unit saw a larger lift of 69%. How about the quality of traffic that these campaigns drove?

We went deeper and looked at consumers who started the online checkout process on Walmart.com. Both campaigns saw double-digit lifts for this behavior as well. However, the interactive unit resulted in 3.5x greater lift for the checkout process. It drove 82% more consumers to start the checkout process than the 24% lift for the standard non-interactive ad.

So what can we learn from this? Like Walmart, advertisers can make calculated marketing investments to drive their revenue. The interactive unit which is almost comparable to an entire circular within the space of a 300×250 ad unit was probably more expensive for Walmart than the standard ad. However, we can see that it delivered better results because it also drove a significantly greater volume of quality traffic that engaged in the checkout process. Depending on how good Walmart is at negotiating with their interactive agency, perhaps they even got an attractive return on their investment.

When it comes to brick and mortar retailers, Walmart is clearly the market leader just by its sheer size. In fact, Walmart’s dominance transfers online where it received 33M visitors in August which was 10% more than the next closest brick and mortar rival, Target. Not only does Walmart attract more consumers but it is also growing at a faster rate than Target. For the past 6 months Walmart.com has seen double digit year-over-year growth in site visitors, outpacing the growth rate for Target.com.

One might wonder how a giant like Walmart continues to maintain such strong growth. One reason is their aggressive online advertising campaigns. In the past six months, Walmart has run several prominent display ad placements on the front pages of large portals like Yahoo! and AOL.

But just how effective are these six-figure investments?

We took a look at a one-day homepage campaign that Walmart ran on the AOL homepage on August 6th. We compared consumers who were exposed to this ad against a control group of consumers who were not exposed but were otherwise similar in behavior and composition. The comparison of the exposed behavior against a control group allows us to measure the true lift of the campaign on online behavior.

Our data below show that the Walmart campaign had an immediate impact on the exposed consumers, driving an 81% greater rate of visitation to the site just within the first week after exposure. More interestingly, the impact of this campaign carried through to four weeks post exposure. With each passing week after August 6th, exposed consumers visited Walmart.com at a higher rate than the control group. By the fourth week, 27% of exposed consumers had visited Walmart.com which is 52% greater than the control group.

This was only one of multiple homepage campaigns that Walmart has run so far this year. Imagine the compound impact of all these campaigns on site visitation to Walmart.com. Clearly, powerful online advertising is one factor driving this retailer’s online growth.

In addition to running prominent online display advertising, Walmart has also been testing various ad formats, from clickable video to more involved interactive ad units. So in part 2 of this blog series, we will investigate differences in the impact on online behavior for these various ad formats. Stay tuned!

A few weeks ago we wrote a blog about a case study on the effectiveness of two ads Kohl’s ran on the homepage of MSN and the homepage of AOL. Recall that the difference between the two ads Kohl’s ran was that the one on AOL was not the standard 300×250 but a larger IAB ad unit size of 300×600. The larger ad did in fact drive nearly 30% more visits to Kohls.com on the same day than the 300×250 on MSN. But how does the Kohl’s ad on AOL compare to other retail campaigns?

In the month of May, Walmart ran a few full day homepage ads on AOL.com. We compared the results for Walmart’s campaigns on AOL with Kohl’s. AOL homepage visitors were over 2x more likely to also visit Walmart.com on the days Walmart ran their ads compared to visitors to Kohls.com on the day that Kohl’s ran its large ad on AOL. The visitation overlap is higher for Walmart because it is a much bigger company getting nearly 6x more monthly visitors to its site compared to Kohl’s (29MM vs. 5MM in April). However, compared to the average visitation to these retail sites by AOL homepage visitors on non-campaign days, Kohl’s saw a greater increase in traffic to its site on the day it ran the homepage ad compared to the increase in traffic Walmart saw on its campaign days.

Site visitation and shopping cart activity on Kohls.com increased by 100% as a result of the homepage ad on AOL. In comparison, Walmart saw a lift of 25% for visitors to Walmart.com but shopping cart activity saw less impact when it ran homepage ads on AOL. The better results Kohl’s saw is probably due to a combination of both the larger ad size as well as its compelling offer for free shipping and measurable cost savings compared to Walmart’s call to action for ‘click to see more patio collection.’ The lesson learned is that in this economy, retailers who address cost savings will see the gain.

To learn more about Compete ad effectiveness solutions and to download the original ad effectiveness study for Kohl’s, visit compete.com/adimpact.