Study: Online ads work like magazine ads
After years thinking of online advertising as
qualitatively different from regular advertising, could it be that it often
works similarly to print advertising?
Possibly, if the results of a new study are to be
believed. Analytics firm RapidBlue has determined that Google (GOOG) AdWords
campaigns tend to increase visits to retail stores. The company, which places
sensors in shops to anonymously monitor customer behavior, studied about 4,800
shoppers in Helsinki. The study showed AdWords campaigns increase "both
brick-and-mortar retail [visits] and visitor dwell times by double-digit
figures," the firm says.
By itself, the study doesn't prove much (it's basically a
marketing tool for RapidBlue's sensor product), but it adds to a growing pile
of evidence that "research online/purchase offline"
("ROPO," marketers call it) is a real phenomenon, and that
advertisers can take big advantage of it. This means that click-through rates,
or counts of completed transactions, are perhaps less important metrics than
had been thought, at least for brick-and-mortar retailers. A study earlier this year by Boston Consulting found that
consumers in the G-20 countries spent about $1.3 trillion on goods in 2010 via
"ROPO" shopping.
If the results of the RapidBlue study are accurate, they
"could upend the way the online advertising industry traditionally tracks
costs and measures return on investment," writes John Koetsier at
VentureBeat. That might be overstating the case, but it's possible that
thinking of the Internet as being sort of the same as, say, a magazine might
prove useful to some retailers.
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