Banner Advertising Benchmarks

How should companies integrate banner / display campaigns that tend to focus on the early stages of the purchase cycle when the strained economy is forcing focus on immediate sales?

As a teaser, I'm providing real results from this strategy at the end of the post to reinforce its effectiveness.

STRATEGY
By effectively blending sources to focus on direct response while including selected sources offering the highest branding value, we're able to meet client needs for leads and sales in the near term without losing sight of long-term marketing needs.

This represents a sustainable strategy and the ratio of performance-centric sources to brand-centric sources can simply be shifted to accommodate different market conditions and client objectives.

MEASUREMENT
More facets of banner advertising value can be measured and used for optimization than has ever been the case.

Engagement: This category of campaign data has become very detailed and provides significant insight into awareness-based value. Learning what banner elements people are interacting with, what percentage of video they're viewing, what they're rolling over, how long they're interacting with banners, etc., helps provide a more comprehensive view of true value. This is especially important for sources added to the mix that are more brand focused.

Traffic: Automatic weighting of the best-performing banner units constantly optimizes creative by click-through rate to maximize efficiency in this category. In addition to reporting on impressions and clicks, measuring return visits to client sites from people who have been exposed to their banners and return later captures a portion of delayed response that's been difficult to identify in the past.

Site Actions: It's crucial to understand the quality of traffic being referred from banner campaigns and measuring site actions by source helps to identify true prospects who are interested and more likely to be shopping "in market." Site actions include additional page views and conversion events such as submitting lead forms and using Contact Us. OPM weights site actions as one of the most important measures of true banner value and clients understand this directly impacts their lead and sales trends.

While there are many other specific tactics related to the goal of balancing branding and direct response, this general guide continues to hold true for our clients. The proof?

April - May 2009 Banner Results for OPM Client


DoubleClick's 2009 Industry Average Click-through Rate = .10%

OPM's Average Click-through Rate = .18%

Results exceed industry benchmark by 80%

DoubleClick's 2009 Industry Average Banner Interaction Rate = 2.11%

OPM Average Banner Interaction Rate = 3.80%

Results exceed industry benchmark by 80%

DoubleClick's 2009 Industry Average Interaction Time = 10.29 seconds

OPM Average Interaction Time = 15.16 seconds

Results exceed industry benchmark by 47%

Client traffic, volume of searches in the major search engines and lead numbers clearly spiked during banner campaigns and fell again when the campaigns ended. Retargeting allowed ongoing exposure to prospects who clicked on the banners during the main campaigns.

Interested in becoming a success story too? Please email Cade Herzog for more information; cherzog@opm.us.com.