Consumers Respond to Brand Advertising differently across Online environments.

The Online Publishers Association(OPA) released a new research study, “A Sense of Place: Why Environments Matter,” that will be unveiled during the 2010 Eyes on the Internet tour kicking off in the Detroit area on June 16th at The Townsend Hotel. During this six city tour, the OPA will update executives in the advertising, marketing and publishing communities on its most recent research.

This research, conducted by Harris Interactive, sought to understand how consumers perceive content in different online environments, and whether these perceptions impact advertising receptivity and consumer response. Perceptions and responses in three key online environments were assessed: 1) media properties (e.g., ESPN.com, iVillage, NYTimes.com, Wall Street Journal Digital Network; 2) portal channels (e.g., AOL News, MSN Money, Yahoo Sports) and 3) social networks (Facebook, MySpace).

“A Sense of Place” features quantitative and qualitative analysis, including an online survey of 2,910 US adult consumers, in order to measure opinions about content and advertising, and consumer perceptions of the brands advertised within these environments. OPA and Harris ran statistical correlations to understand whether there is a relationship between how content is perceived in these environments and how advertisers are received and responded to. Correlations measure the strength of the relationship between two variables, and can range from -1 to plus1, with zero being no relationship. The results of the correlations are positive and strong, indicating that there is a relationship between how content is perceived and how advertisers are received.

Topline Findings

— Sites with relevant content correlate strongly with audiences being loyal to these sites (a correlation score of .445)

— Sites with trusted content correlates strongly with the sites’ advertisers being perceived as reputable (a correlation score of .388)

— Brands perceived as relevant are more likely to have a response to their online ads (a correlation score of .353)

Among respondents who have purchased brands as a result of online advertising, 80% describe themselves as having a strong, positive emotional connection to the sites where the ads ran.

“The goal of our research was to help brand marketers better understand why consumers receive and respond to online brand advertising differently depending on the content environment in which the message appears,” said Pam Horan, OPA president. “Our findings show that site destination matters as trust and relevant content are perceived differently across content environments. This study concludes that consumers perceive and take action differently depending on where the advertiser’s message appears.”

Environment-specific findings include:

The research results indicate that the three environments generated different consumer perceptions and responsiveness to the content and advertisers. For example,

— Consumers are more likely to trust content on media sites (72%) than portal channels (60%) and social media (23%)

— Audiences on media sites are significantly more likely to believe these sites’ advertisers are high quality and reputable (24%), compared to portal channels (20%) and social media (8%)

— People who recall purchasing from a site’s advertisers are significantly more likely to do so from media sites (8%) than portal channels (5%) or social media (3%)

— Those loyal to media sites are more likely to purchase from advertisers on these sites (15%) than portal loyalists or social media loyalists (8% and 4% respectively)

“The study clearly concludes that online media proprieties offer advertisers a distinct brand halo effect for their advertising messages,”
continued Horan.

For more information at http://www.online-publishers.org>