Search and display advertising can benefit both your direct response and your branding goals. Here's the breakdown.
It has always perplexed me that standards for different online marketing channels differ, despite the fact that the internet is always driven by the user.
Unlike traditional marketing where the touch points may or may not be initiated by the individual, in the online world it is the person who goes to the websites, and it is the person who initiates a search query. So shouldn't the measurement of our ad effectiveness be the same across channels?
But it isn't the same. We generally look at search based on direct response (DR) metrics, while we look at display based on branding metrics. Many times clients who utilize both will assign different success metrics to each, holding search to a much stricter standard.
David Ogilvy once said "If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative." This motto is taken to heart in search but is more flexible in display. There is a double standard in measuring -- one born of thinking search has no utility in branding and that display is ineffective at DR -- so these channels' perceived weaknesses are played down and their strengths are amplified more than they ought to be.
The case for display as a DR medium
There is no doubt that search is the best DR channel online, but it benefits from the demand driven by display and offline channels. Its DR success ought to be attributed, in part, to other touch points in the greater marketing mix. In other words, if we know a display ad was the first touch point for the user before it converted to a search term, it ought to get some credit if we can reasonably prove that the person was engaged with the ad. So display can and ought to have DR metrics that evaluate the fitness of the campaign; these metrics should be optimized to show significant lift in sales or leads.
The obstacles
Most savvy marketers know, however, that is this is a slippery slope and will open up a can of worms that they don't want their clients to see. If we start to look at display with the same strict standards of search, we will find a lot of display advertising that is not optimized to the extent that it can be. As good as display can be, we will never be able to measure its DR success as well as we can measure search's, since users are not actively looking for their product or service as they are with search.
The benefits
But that does not mean we should give up; it means we should develop better techniques to optimize and track. This will only help, not hinder, the branding aspect, and it will only benefit our clients, and, just as importantly, users, as we target them with offers they are interested in seeing. Why do you think there is a phenomenon called "banner blindness?" Users are used to not seeing ads that they have some interest in, so they come to ignore them completely. It is the seeds we sowed from the early days of the internet when reach was king over the user.
The case for search as a branding medium
The branding aspect of search has always been dismissed, but in prior articles, I've shown how search can be a very important player in the all-important battle for mindshare because it is an active medium and because it is used by millions of people everyday. I've always felt the industry has over-hyped the branding strength of display over search. Search, just like display, can reach millions of targeted people, and, unlike display, we know the user is reasonably interested in seeing our offer. It can drive future conversions, not only within search but through display ads when a user later sees the ad on a website visit. Like DR, branding is not a one-way street; search most certainly affects other channels as other channels affect it.
In the end, we ought to measure both search and display with the same metrics and attribute conversion and branding data to each. Although this is a complicated endeavor, it is a necessary one. It cannot be denied that they both affect each other through brand and DR traffic. The utility ought to be measured in both categories to maximize client results and user satisfaction. When we measure DR campaigns, all touch points ought to be taken into account -- not just the last one -- and from a branding perspective, we ought to measure how search and other channels drive more demand in the long term as they drive qualified traffic now; both search and display ought to be evaluated together to get a true picture of their effectiveness online, and in the greater marketing mix, they are both great vehicles for DR and branding.
David Singh is manager, search practice lead at Underscore Marketing. Read full bio.
No comments:
Post a Comment