The latest Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) cross-media Brand Engagement study has found that
Online advertising for retail brands delivers the biggest effect in the media mix, driving 40% of brand engagement, compared with press (31%) and TV (19%), according to a new study from the IAB.
The cross-media Brand Engagement study set out to quantify the impact of display internet advertising on brand engagement relative to other communication channels, such as press, radio and TV.
Brand Engagement measures how different advertising channels help a brand build relationships with their consumers. By identifying an individual medium’s Brand Engagement strengths, advertisers can better tailor their messages and learn what consumers look for in terms of marketing communications and brand affinity.
Researchers examined responses to the advertising campaigns of five department stores: Debenhams, John Lewis, Marks and Spencer, Woolworths and Next.
The research found that Brand Engagement for department store brands is determined, in the main, by four key factors.
Affinity – whether the store has a good reputation, and is for ‘people like me’ - ranked tops (24.3%).
Quality – that the store sells well known, high quality brands (19.3%), was the second most important factor.
Fitting one’s needs – relating to store convenience, and whether it suits a consumer’s particular tastes – (16.5%) came next.
Presence – a readily available, traditional store, with a national high street presence –was recognised as the fourth (14.7%)
The average online ad spend for all five brands in the study was just 2.5% of total media budget, which suggests that internet advertising is around 16 times more effective than the monetary investment would suggest.
To put this into perspective, in the second half of 2007, the retail sector accounted for just 5% of all internet advertising expenditure, whilst total consumer spending on products, goods and services online for 2007 was £47 billion.
Based on the findings of all four brand engagement studies, the retail sector is in line with the small car sector in terms of the influence online has in driving consumer engagement with brands.
Previous studies have shown that for small cars, online drove 40% of total brand engagement, where for haircare it was 8.5% and for fizzy drinks it was 24%.
Chief executive of the IAB, Guy Phillipson, said: “Whilst consumers’ online shopping spend continues to grow year-on-year, there still remains a great discrepancy in terms of how much retailers are spending on their internet communications.
“We hope that this latest Brand Engagement study will help retail advertisers fully appreciate the brand-building capabilities of online, and in turn increase the medium’s share of their marketing budgets.”
 |
Your comments |
Be the first to comment on this article