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With the slowing economy, I fear that more and more marketers will take the short-sighted route of placing their dollars into search-engine advertising forgoing display.  The argument is that companies see this as a means of engaging the most active users.

This is an obvious truth in that someone searching for a “Nikon D300” chances are within the purchasing funnel or looking for support, however I consider this short-sighted in that the marketer neglects the question of how the consumer is to arrive at the purchase intent stage without investing in:

• Product awareness
• Brand consideration
• Brand preference

MediaPost has a great success story on how Dockers used display advertising to better refine the purchasing process.  Dockers contracted with New York-based RAMP Digital and Black Bag Advertising to craft a Father’s Day campaign with the intention of pulling potential customers further down the purchasing funnel without breaking the bank on rich-media costs.

RAMP was able to provide an IAB-approved, Flash based ad which allowed customers to choose from an assortment of apparel in an interactive environment before directing them to the appropriate landing page.  They leveraged:

• Behavioral & Demographic Targeting: 30 to 45 yr old women looking for Father’s Day gifts
• Semantic Targeting: Refined the ad based off user selection in an interactive environment
• Technology Advances: The advertising units were less than 40kb; lower than the rich media threshold which would have resulted in additional ad-serving fees

The point is that although display advertising may not be the panacea for marketers, it isn’t broken either.

97% of consumers who interacted with the ad ended up clicking through to the Dockers Web site, and there were about 8 interactions within the unit per person. And according to Jonathan Mendez, RAMP’s founder and CEO, click-through rates (CTRs) on the Ramps were 110% higher than a set of control ads, while the engagement rate was 150% higher. (From Semantic Display Ads Drive Clicks, Conversions For Dockers)

It was by providing an intelligently created ad that took advantage of the high traffic the AOL network provided to allow for refined targeting the appropriate viewers that pulled prospective customers further down the purchase funnel. It created both product and brand interest and purchasing intent in one unit.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Advertising, Mobile, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.