A recent article on the expected growth in SEO advertising has prompted me to think a bit about how online advertising will be affected by the current downturn. It’s pretty clear technology and marketing budgets are going to be cut (duh, they already are) but I wonder how advertisers will adjust their mix?
There was a lot of talk at the OMMA Behavioral Advertising Conference about the chance that advertisers will flee to search, as it produces the easiest to measure ROI. However, it is also becoming more apparent that search is positively impacted by display and other advertising. For example, as Comscore study showed a 173% lift sales when display and search advertising are used together, vs. a 121% increase in sales when search is used alone. Additionally, the Comscore study showed that
Among 139 studies in which consumers’ online behavior was monitored following exposure to a display ad, the average lift in the number of visitors to the advertiser site (i.e. percent change in reach between the test and control groups after adjusting for any differences that existed prior to the start of the campaign) was 65.0% during the 1st week following the first exposure to an ad.
Display does positively impact traffic and sales, but it is hard to measure this effect beyond the actual low click-throughs seen with display ads.
My basic point it that I wouldn’t be surprised if display advertising took a bit of a hit - but this will create opportunities for sophisticated advertisers with tools that can track advertising impact “beyond the last click.” These sorts of tools may do well during the recession, assuming they can provide a provable efficacy - and assuming the can talk to the right advertisers.
