Internet Powerful Complement To Traditional Advertising Media.

In a joint presentation to agency and corporate advertising executives, the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the MSN network of Internet services from Microsoft Corp., and researcher Rex Briggs announced the results of groundbreaking new research that validates the importance of online advertising. The culmination of a yearlong investigation of the relative effectiveness of and synergies between online and traditional media advertising, the research found that online advertising’s share in the media mix can have a significant increase in the effectiveness of an overall advertising campaign. With the support of ARF and IAB methodology, MSN commissioned Briggs to examine the role the Internet plays in the advertising mix of a consumer package goods brand.

“Helping people deepen their understanding of online’s ability to build brand continues to be among our top priorities,” said Joanne Bradford, vice president of MSN Sales at Microsoft. “Today’s research gives media planners the data they’ve long craved to help quantify the value of the Internet and gives them steps to maximize the effectiveness of their online efforts.”

“Dove is dedicated to developing marketing plans built on consumer insights,” said Peter Waxman, director of Dove masterbrand at Unilever Home & Personal Care – North America. “We commend MSN for spearheading this research, and we will further explore the benefits of cross-channel marketing.”

Although recent studies have proven that online advertising is an effective branding medium, today’s research marks one of the first times online advertising was studied in tandem within an overall advertising campaign and therefore provides more realistic results.

Until today, media planners and buyers often were challenged to quantify the benefits of increasing online advertising’s share of the media mix. Today’s study is one of the first of its kind to measure the effectiveness of recent advertising campaigns by working with Unilever Home & Personal Care’s Dove Nutrium Bar in the real world and real time. Award-winning researcher Rex Briggs of Marketing Evolution conducted the independent, third-party study with Dynamic Logic Inc., a leading independent research firm focused on advertising effectiveness. Unilever, Web Marketing LLC and mindshare were engaged in the analysis and assisted to ensure that all Dove’s online and offline advertising was properly accounted for and carefully tracked. These are the research conclusions:

The research suggests that CPG brands that increase their online advertising may result in increased key metrics, such as brand awareness, brand attributes and purchase intent.

Higher online frequency boosts branding effectiveness. Specifically, increasing the number of online impressions from six impressions to 12 impressions over six weeks can increase Dove Nutrium Bar’s overall branding effectiveness by 42 percent.
TV, print and online advertising are each effective at branding, yet online is generally more cost-efficient in terms of branding increases from the precampaign level.

“We’ve seen lots of proof that online advertising works, but this is the first time we have measured how online really stacks up to television and magazines,” said Jim Spaeth, president of ARF. “The results are a giant leap forward for the advertising industry, addressing a question it has long been pondering.”

“IAB considers the results of this research to be extremely valuable to our members and the industry at large, because they demonstrate that the Internet can dramatically improve a brand’s ROI on overall marketing when it is a significant part of the overall media mix,” said Greg Stuart, president and CEO of IAB. “We believe this landmark research is so important that we have already gotten agreement from the entire IAB board and other members to conduct a Phase II study with more than 15 publishers and six major marketers.”

Additional information on the MSN Advantage Marketing Program and the cross media research is available at http://advantage.msn.com/.