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IAB Europe Bigs Up Brand Advertising In Display With New Whitepaper

IAB Europe released its whitepaper on European brand advertising this week. It’s full of some interesting data on display advertising, and its effect on the entire purchase funnel. The report concentrates on a number of areas, including measurement, brand effectiveness, formats, targeting and cross-media advertising. The whitepaper covers familiar ground by hammering home the point that brand advertising in display needs to go beyond the click in terms of attribution – and should get the slice of the media pie it deserves. Hmmm, I assumed all online advertising was DR. Brand has nothing to do with it. You can now buy the desired audience and target users with the right ad at the right time – resulting in higher CTRs and conversions. The idea of wasting thousands of euro/pounds on a brand campaign alongside content on a top tier site isn’t going to fly with cash conscious CMOs in this crap economy. This might well explain the slump in UK and French year-on-year display ad spend.

But I guess there’s room for improvement, and the report goes some way to addressing concerns and highlighting reasons why more money should go to brand display. In case you haven’t read here’s a summary of the areas covered in the whitepaper.

The IAB Europe whitepaper on display advertising measurement:

- The click has been proven not to be an appropriate measurement tool for every online campaign
- When relying on click rates the majority of audience engagements do not receive any credit for their contribution to brand building
- The most important metrics for brand building campaigns are brand awareness, purchase intent, likelihood to recommend and favourability
- Analysis of more than a thousand campaigns shows in 72% of all cases display advertising initiates conversions.
- Only 23% of conversions were a direct result of search activities.

The IAB Europe whitepaper on brand effectiveness:

- Looking at brand effectiveness, the click has been shown not to cover relevant aspects of campaign evaluation
- Online display advertising has been proven to have significant impact on consumers’ brand awareness, brand perception and sales both online and offline
- Campaign analysis leads to the conclusion that the optimal frequency would be six to seven contacts, depending on the goals set
- Compared with television, online display generates higher engagement rates and substantially higher efficiency than TV campaigns. Users interact for nearly 60 seconds with an online ad – twice as long as a standard TV spot normally airs.

The IAB Europe whitepaper on display ad formats:

- Large formatted ads generate longer dwell time and a higher impact on users awareness
- Consider creative insights when producing online ads
- Creative rich media formats drive engagement and dwell better than simple banner ads
- Videos ads are becoming more important to advertisers, as they have been shown to be highly effective
- The effectiveness of online videos is comparable to that of TV spots – and generally with higher efficiency.

The IAB Europe whitepaper on display targeting:

- Carrying out online campaigns with targeting criteria has been shown to have substantial positive effects on brand metrics and at the same time raising efficiency
- Compared with run-of-network campaigns, targeted campaigns have been shown to be more than twice as effective
- Targeted campaigns have a positive impact on users’ perception: one quarter of internet users say that ads
are more appealing to them if targeted.

The IAB Europe whitepaper on using display in cross media campaigns

- Carrying out online campaigns with targeting criteria has been shown to have substantial positive effects on brand metrics and at the same time raising efficiency
- Compared with run-of-network campaigns, targeted campaigns have been shown to be more than twice as effective
- Targeted campaigns have a positive impact on users’ perception: one quarter of internet users say that ads
are more appealing to them if targeted.