Online Advertising, Offline Purchases

Here at Geary, we like to explore the synergy that can occur when your various marketing methods are tightly aligned, and how several parts of your marketing mix can interact in curious and unexpected ways. Two recent studies reveal just how online marketing efforts can affect offline buying habits.

As reported by SearchEngineWatch, the studies came from comScore and were commissioned by Yahoo! and local search agency TMP Directional Marketing. The first study examined the shopping behavior of 175,000 consumers, comparing the purchasing behavior of people exposed to online exposure to those who had not been exposure but were behaviorally and demographically identical.

The researchers found that those exposed to online search and display advertising tended to ‘pre-shop’ online prior to making a purchase, and this behavior boosted in-store sales. In the study, those who pre-shopped online spent 41 percent more money in-store compared to those who were not exposed to online ads.

In the study commissioned by TMPDM, 3,000 consumers were surveyed about their local searching behavior. A full 83 percent of local searchers followed up offline with a phone call, purchase, or in-store visit. Of those who followed up, 61 percent made purchases.

In addition, the study’s findings underscore the importance of optimizing local search results. Of searchers surveyed, 60 percent said that when looking for local businesses, they viewed the top results as the most relevant. A quarter of respondents didn’t want to scroll down to view more results.

These studies’ results corroborate the findings of earlier studies, such as an Accenture report that found, for example, that 67 percent of searchers prefer to buy in physical store, 69 percent research product features online, and 68 percent comparison-shop online. Lastly, comScore reported last year that 63 percent of purchases related to search occur offline!

These studies are a good reminder that the success of online marketing extends way beyond online sales. Especially when it comes to large purchases, the Internet is a common starting point, but the purchases tend to be made offline. Thus, when measuring the success of an online campaign, marketers need to track the effect online advertising has on in-store purchases.

Universal Goes Nuts over “Let’s Go Crazy”

As if the music industry needs any more negative publicity, Universal Music Group demanded a video be pulled from YouTube citing copyright infringement. The short, video depicts a baby dancing to the Prince tune “Let’s Go Crazy” and was uploaded to YouTube by the girl’s mother, Stephanize Lenz, to share with friend and family. As the firestorm surrounding the popular video has heated up, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has stepped in to defend Lenz and filed suit against Universal.

In an era where companies are jostling for visibility on YouTube, Universal Music Group has clearly lost its way. Many companies would kill to have their products prominently featured on the most popular video-sharing site, and savvy marketers are pouring big bucks into viral campaigns on YouTube and other sites. Universal’s bullish tactics have only brought negative publicity their way, and turned the YouTube community against them.

After all, Universal set off the entire controversy by fighting someone who enjoys one of their products. Alienating your customer base is never a good idea.

Whether Universal is on the right side of the law is beside the point. Though they may win in court, they are losing among their customer base because their actions appear heavy-handed and misguided.

In addition, the implications of this legal battle could be huge for YouTube. The site features hundreds of videos of talent shows, lip-synching, and other videos that involve copyrighted music. Do these videos represent free product placement for record companies, or egregious copyright violations? Universal has publicized its view. What’s yours?

Nielsen/NetRatings In the News Again

Over the past couple of weeks, Nielsen/NetRatings has been testing the waters to see how their plans to introduce a new method of website measurement will be received. Nielsen is proposing to phase out rankings based on page views and instead move to a “visitor engagement” metric based on number of user sessions and average time spent on a site. In my opinion, this metric is tailor-made for publishers and advertisers looking to maximize ad revenue, but falls short of the many varied metrics needed by the average website. So what is the right metric? Simply put, it’s the one that tells you whether a visit to your site was successful, whatever your definition of success whether it’s an online purchase, information requested, or visitor input.

Understanding Motivation

Web analytics is a discipline that aims to scientifically and objectively observe web site behavior and use that observation to model and predict other behavior. However, there’s something to be said for understanding the “why’s” of behavior as well. Adotas recently posted an article about WhitePages.com and their effort to understand the psychology of how and why people prefer to contact companies, and most importantly, what kinds of personal information they are comfortable revealing on the Internet. Is there personal information that you are unwilling to share under any circumstance with a website or is your willingness to share information dependant on your level of trust in that company? Are there incentives that could induce you to share more information? It’s not enough anymore just to know that someone abandoned your lead generation form, the next level of analysis is to understand WHY.

Send me a yellow shirt to wear in protest, err, education

An agency stands its ground and claims to protest landing pages at Ad Tech SF this morning. A clever way to stir up dialogue about moving the professional marketing masses beyond the landing page and a one-size-fits-all optimization technique to segmentation based on user need and intent. It is time for marketers and agencies to change their approach to web development and marketing campaigns so that they become one; aligned. The post-click, segmented conversion path provides the framework for optimal user and sales relationship experience by quickly, yet skillfully, delivering relevant content and messaging. Expect higher conversion rates and more lucrative opportunities to have web and email dialogues with users who have profiled themselves based on need/want and stage.

Cookie Debate Heats Up

Days after comScore released it’s startling findings on cookie deletion rates, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released an open letter calling on comScore and Nielsen/NetRatings to submit to an independent third-party audit of their measurement processes. With such large discrepancies in audience numbers between the server log files of IAB members and measurement companies like comScore and NNR, there’s a real need for transparency into the methodology and processes for how these numbers are arrived at. Without good explanations for the difference in reported numbers, there will be no confidence in either set of measurements and that confidence is important to the continued growth of interactive marketing.

Wanna Cookie? No, Thanks…

According to a recent report by comScore, up to 31% of internet users cleared cookies from their machines during the month. Why is this a concern? Well, cookies are used to identify unique visitors to websites and if people are clearing their computer of cookies, when they revisit a website they are getting a new cookie redeposited on their machine. This can result in website traffic statistics being skewed to show a larger unique audience than is really there. This study provides crucial hard data in framing on-going discussions about how unique visitors are calculated and reported. Privacy issues are going to continue to generate debate about website audience measurement techniques as consumers try to wrestle control of their information back from marketers.

Google Analytics and the Spaghetti Test

I lived in Italy and learned a key lesson from my flat-mate. Instead of sticking a fork in the boiling water and scorching her tongue on the spaghetti to see if it was done, she plucked out a strand, whipped it high over her shoulder, and turned around to see if it stuck to the wall. It did. Score. Dinner was ready and delicious.

We use Omniture’s Sitecatalyst to see what sticks. Now that Google is actively advertising their analytics solution, we expect the marketing intelligence tool category to become ubiquitous.

Marketing folks that can create actionable insights from these tools will keep clients from burning their tongues over and over. And, they will have the foresight to tell clients that throwing roma tomatoes at the wall may at best net them a lick of juice and 2 seeds.