There are 5 Keys to Online Advertising Success
Online advertising is a ‘natural fit’ for premium and luxury brands as they look to follow their customers online. Its highly visual and interactive nature makes it a much more suitable vehicle for delivering a premium brand message than other forms of online marketing such as paid for search. And recent research from eMarketer has given luxury marketers 5 key pointers to optimise their online advertising spends for greatest effectiveness.
Their first tip is to ensure you use the full range of formats at your disposal to maximise your impact, reach and frequency in your target markets. Looking at the US market, although spend on online advertising is forecast to grow by over 40% over the next 4 years, video advertising is expected to grow over 3 times faster. Video will be the new ‘jewel in the crown’ of luxury advertisers but more standard formats such as banners shouldn’t be overlooked. These ‘cheaper’ formats can still deliver simple, effective messages and can be used to increase a campaign’s frequency, whilst the more expensive video formats can be used to deliver high impact messages in highly targeted environments.
Their second tip is to invest in video. This is perhaps more pertinent with luxury brands where conveying a message of desirability and craftsmenship is absolutely key. Video advertising combines the emotive and involving appeal of television advertising with the measurability of online. Recent research by Eyeblaster has shown that video advertising was the most effective form of online advertising – in fact, 71% more effective in terms of performance than any other form of rich media advertising . Put simply, if you do not invest in video, you’re going to be left behind.
Thirdly, marketers need to use the right metrics to judge the effectiveness of their online campaign. Too many use clicks and impressions, which are easy to measure but much too simplistic. The measurement of clicks in particular has led to the false impression that online advertising is less effective than email and search. Recent research from Dynamic Logic shows that good online display advertising has highly positive effects on brand awareness, brand favourability and purchase intent. And research from ComScore demonstrates that online display campaigns drive users to conduct branded searches and visit advertiser sites ‘post impression’*. eMarketer suggests the ideal metrics to measure are the online advertising’s impact on brand metrics such as awareness and purchase intention – but this is expensive. In the absence of this, you should be looking at your campaign holistically and watching for increases in brand searches, direct traffic to the site and ‘non transactional’ conversions such as social media sign ups, email subscriptions or content shares during online campaigns.
Online Advertising's Impact on Brand Metrics
Fourthly, premium and luxury marketers need to adapt their advertising for the online audience. Attention spans are extremely short in this environment so Dynamic Logic has given advertisers 5 rules to follow: brand persistently, stick with a simple and direct message, don’t use too many creative formats, don’t use more than 2 messages per execution, use people where possible and steer clear of ‘reveal’ ads, which rarely work. And of course, the measurability and immediateness of online allows advertisers to test creatives in a way they wouldn’t be able to offline – advertisers should ensure they take this opportunity.
The final recommendation is to use all the tools at your disposal to make the ad relevant and personal to the user. Targeting options offered by publishers such as demographic, geographic, contextual and behavioural offer you the opportunity to target the audience that is interested in your message, and personalised ad platforms such as Struq can be used to personalise messages to consumers based on their previous browsing behaviour to increase relevancy. And when crafting your message, you need to understand what online consumers are willing to exchange their valuable time for – discounts, valuable information and entertainment, in that order of priority.
Online advertising is a key vehicle for luxury advertisers to target individuals at a higher stage in the ‘purchase funnel’, when opinions and preferences are being formed and when price is less of a consideration. By using all the tools and data at your disposal to reach and engage with relevant audiences, you can ensure that you’re using this highly effective, and much mis-understood, medium to the optimum.
For a full recording of the eMarketer webinar ‘The Keys to Online Display Advertising’ click here.
* A site visit that doesn’t result from a click on the ad.
