Online Ad Effectiveness: Ad Placement matters when Building Brands Online.

A new report released today by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) found that advertising effectiveness scores on quality, original content sites as represented by OPA members, were numerically higher than on the Web, portals or ad networks. Based on independent Dynamic Logic MarketNorms data, the findings show that ads on OPA sites consistently had significant effectiveness in 1) raising awareness, 2) creating message association, 3) generating brand favorability and 4) driving purchase intent over portals, ad networks and the industry. The full report is available at www.online-publishers.org and includes more extensive comparisons.

The new report, “ Improving Ad Performance Online” is part of a series of OPA reports that leverage independent Dynamic Logic’s MarketNorms ® data for measuring online advertising’s effectiveness and branding impact. The current report has additional analysis on ad effectiveness broken down by demographic, product category and the most popular ad unit sizes used on the Web.

“Ad effectiveness among OPA member sites’ continually outperforms other sites, including portals and ad networks,” said Pam Horan, president of the OPA. “Ad network performance has declined to a point where they provide no significant increase in purchase intent to advertisers. As a result of this insignificance, the average brand campaign may not achieve greater brand lift by advertising on an ad network. ”

KEY FINDINGS

The findings show that ads on these OPA member sites consistently had significant effectiveness in raising awareness, creating message association, generating brand favorability and driving purchase intent over portals, ad networks and the overall MarketNorms average. In addition:

* Ad networks were shown to provide advertisers with the smallest change across ad effectiveness metrics
* The most popular ad sizes – medium rectangles, leaderboards and wide skyscrapers – perform significantly better on OPA sites than MarketNorms® on most metrics
* Video ad impact on content sites represented by OPA members was greater than the MarketNorms average, and had the greatest impact on purchase intent and awareness metrics
* Consumers are more involved with interactive ads on OPA sites evidenced by their significantly higher awareness, message association, brand favorability and purchase intent

ADDITIONAL FINDINGS

The current report offers additional analysis on ad effectiveness by demographics and product category including:

* 18-34 year olds are more responsive to ads on OPA sites
* Advertising effectiveness for categories such as CPG, entertainment and telecom was significantly higher on OPA sites than overall MarketNorms® especially for the more difficult to move metrics like brand favorability and purchase intent
* Telecom and travel advertising on portals led to statistically insignificant purchase intent while technology purchase intent on ad networks was also insignificant

Horan continued, “The fact remains that placement of your ad does matter, both in its effectiveness and impact with consumers. Well-lit, high quality content sites continue to offer advertisers the opportunity to raise awareness, create message association, drive purchase intent and generate brand favorability.”

To download study CLICK on link below:
http://www.online-publishers.org/images/Improving_Ad_Effectiveness_Online_OPA_Wave3.pdf>