By Ariel Geifman, Principal Analyst at Eyeblaster.
In the days before digital, consumers turned to the yellow pages for the business’ phone number, as the last step before purchasing. By promoting the question, "Where did you get my number?," the Yellow Pages' salesman could prove time and time again they was the source of the sale, even if the call was triggered by an ad that appeared on radio, magazines and TV.
Just like the last click, the Yellow Pages over-represented the true value of its share of conversions. Today, the modern equivalent of the Yellow pages is search marketing.
The Purchase Funnel
Search marketing works on the lower portion of the purchase funnel by targeting consumers in the intent to purchase stage and therefore the conversion rate is high. On the other hand, display works on all stages of the funnel, bringing in new customers through brand awareness, hoping to influence the visitor to the intent to purchase stage, and therefore the conversion rate is relatively low.
As in the case of the Yellow Pages, search gets more than its fair share of the credit for conversions. Currently, advertisers attribute the conversion to the last click/impression. New research of global search and display cross channel campaigns shows that nearly one in five of the conversions that are attributed to Search was preceded by a display ad.
Much like AdReady discusses in the white paper, “Search Ads + Banner Ads: A Powerful One-Two Punch,” there’s limitations to search advertising that could be overcome with display. While search harvests prospective customers that are already in the purchase funnel, it reaches limited number of people.
According to Kevin Lee, CEO at Didit, “Savvy marketers understand the interaction between search and display, and use the high reach of display to add more searchers at the uppermost levels of the purchase funnel.” Lee goes on to explain that marketers should put their money first into retargeting people who have already visited the Web site through search or direct navigation, which he calls the "most effective use of display dollars on a marginal basis."
Conversions that resulted from display advertising followed by search are evidence of the effectiveness of display advertising. Display increases awareness and retention of the brand such that users remember the name of the brand or the company in order to search for it and get to its website. Therefore, the role of each channel is not mutually exclusive, as evidenced by the conversions that are the result of a combination of search and display.
How to get your conversions up
How can you increase conversion both directly through display and through search? An analysis of hundreds of billions of impressions served by Eyeblaster shows that conversions are typically higher for advertisers that adhere to the following rules of thumb:
1. When allocating your budget, take into account that some of your Display budget spills over to Search.
Data shows that 17% of Search conversions resulted from at least one Display impression. Therefore, an increase in your Display budget increases conversions both in the Display and in the Search channels.
2. Know the vertical.
Some verticals call for greater emphasis on Display, while others on Search. Entertainment brands look to generate awareness before pushing users down the funnel as data indicates that 92% of Entertainment conversions were the result of the display channel and only 8% the result of the search channel. The Travel vertical, which targets users who are actively looking for a vacation, has a higher proportion of its conversions from Search—54%, while only 46% are coming from Display.
3. Use Rich Media creative with interactive and engaging content.
Rich creative lures users’ attention from the publishers’ content to the ad and attains more than double the average Conversion Rate as compared to Standard Banners. In addition, a new research by Eyeblaster and Microsoft Advertising shows that engaging ads with high Dwell tends to increase brand related keyword search.
4. Place ads in environments where users spend ample time on the webpage immersed in the editorial content.
Environments like news and mail, increase the likelihood that users notice the ad, engage with it and later convert. These environments also have higher Dwell Rate and Dwell Time, which increases brand related keyword searches.
To hear about UTalkMarketing Search training courses, contact Gia on 020 7300 7333 or email gia@utalkmarketing.com
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