Already at 11:30 am I started feeling the thrill.  At 11:55 I went on Gilt.com and started refreshing the page.  Finally it happened.  Exactly at noon, the site started another sale of luxury brands. 

I immediately went browsing with full force—my chance of owning an Ermenegildo Zegna, for 70% off, or just for a few hundred bucks.  Apparently, however, I wasn’t the only one there, and within minutes all that was left was empty online shelves.


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Gilt Groupe is an invitation only site that sells designer brands in up to 70% off their retail price.  Each sale lasts for 36 hours and is then removed from the site.  The sales are first come first served, and the number of items is limited, so typically many items are sold out a short time after the sale begins.


What has made a calculated guy like me go wild and be willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a whim on items that I am not even sure that I am going to wear?  What is that spell that Gilt casts on its members that pushes them to spend?  Gilt is using three powerful techniques that can help any advertiser get better performance and increase sales on his or her campaign:

• Perceived value – As the famous phrase of many infomercials go:  “you’re not spending, you’re saving.  Gilt provides their members the sense that they are getting a great deal that they cannot get anywhere else.
•  Time limit – Buy now or be silent forever.  As each sale is for a limited time, you are constantly under pressure to make the purchase immediately.
• Value of scarcity – There is limited stock from every item.  Items are also sold out pretty quickly.  Therefore, start practicing the art of browsing without blinking.  If you like a specific item, you need to make a decision on the spot, or it’s gone.

When combined, all of these techniques push even the most astute consumer to an online shopping spree.  Try any combination of these techniques in the message of your ads to push users to action now, and you too should be able to get users to pull out their credit card.



 

Ariel Geifman | Principal Analyst, MediaMind Research






 

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When 90% of car buyers now begin their research online, it only makes sense that more and more budgets find their way to Display. A recently released study by MediaMind Research shows that despite the decline in car sales, there has been an increase in the average number of impressions per automotive advertiser in 2009. This recession resilience signals a move from less effective advertising channels to online display.


An analysis of billions of automotive global impressions by MediaMind revealed the following highlights:
• Rich Media doubles Conversion Rate and nearly triples CTR.
• Mobile banners are performing well for automotive, achieving a similar Conversion Rate to Expandable Banners and Polite Banners.
• Synched Ads increase Conversion Rate by 67%.
• MediaMind’s Automatic Optimization, which uses a sophisticated algorithm to deliver the most impactful creative, increases Conversion Rate by 79%.
• The Cash for Clunkers program in America boosted Conversion Rate threefold, and increased users’ responsiveness to automotive ads to a peak.

The research addresses key questions facing advertisers:
• Which sites/environments deliver the highest Conversion Rate and Dwell Rate?
• Which ad formats proved most effective in past campaigns?
• How can mobile ads boost your performance?
• Why do Automatic Optimization and Synched Ads deliver superior results?

Online advertising provides great value for the automotive industry, and advertisers are voting with their dollars. When users are looking for their next car online, losing or gaining a prospective customer may be just an impression away.


To download the full Analytics Bulletin: Making Display Advertising the Engine for Automotive Growth, click here.

Entertainment is the fastest growing activity on the Internet. In addition, 99.6% of online users in the U.S use the Internet for entertainment. Advertisers in the entertainment industry should seize this opportunity to create more entertaining and engaging online display ads. A report from MediaMind and comScore releases new data on entertainment advertising and analyzes how to use display advertising to boost box-office revenues.

The Internet is now inextricably entwined with our daily lives. With this ubiquity comes an opportunity for the entertainment industry, as well as an expectation from the discerning consumer. Entertainment websites now reach 99.6% of the U.S. online population every month, who spend an average of 227 minutes per user on entertainment-related content.

An analysis of billions of impressions shows that the click has become irrelevant as a measure of online marketing success, especially for entertainment. Users are more likely to engage and interact with entertainment campaigns compared to other verticals, but they are less likely to click. Furthermore, 95% of users who interact with entertainment ads never click, which makes it imperative to deliver and measure the total brand experience wherever the consumer engages.

To measure the branding success of display, MediaMind offers its Dwell metric. New research by comScore, MediaMind and Microsoft Advertising shows that Dwell has a direct effect on brand metrics. The research shows that consumers who saw campaigns with high dwell were three times more likely to search for brand-related keywords and showed stronger brand survey lift than those exposed to campaigns with low dwell. Furthermore, campaigns with high dwell increased advertisers’ site traffic by 69% and increased brand engagement—increasing page views and time spent on the brand’s site.

The success of display advertising is linked to box office revenues. comScore AdEffx Action Lift directly measures the effect that entertainment marketers’ online advertising has on consumers’ interest in a film by passively measuring their Internet activity. Mathematical analysis of this activity can be used to predict box-office results.

To download the full 20-page report, including exclusive data and insights from comScore and MediaMind, click here.

Engagement is the third dimension of online advertising, beyond the traditional reach and frequency. While the theory behind the benefits of interactivity and engagement are clear, Eyeblaster recognizes the need for empirical evidence that engagement metrics do affect brand effectiveness metrics.

New research provides scientific evidence for the effectiveness of Dwell as an engagement metric. The research by Eyeblaster, Microsoft Advertising and comScore shows that when more people choose to actively engage with your brand as measured by high Dwell Rate and high Average Dwell Time, the more the needle shifts in favor of your brand.

The new research also concludes that campaigns with a high Dwell not only increase brand engagement, but also drive increased brand related search and increased site traffic. Campaigns with a high Dwell generated three times the brand related keyword searches, and increased site traffic by 69% as compared to campaigns with a low Dwell.

An additional analysis by Eyeblaster shows that Dwell has an impact way beyond branding. Ads with a high Dwell Rate are more likely to have a high Conversion Rate as compared to ads with a low Dwell Rate.
It would seem that there is more to a display ad then a mere click. How then, can you increase your campaign’s Dwell? These three simple steps will help you increase your Dwell and ultimately your ROI:
• First, use placements around editorial content that requires thorough reading.
• Second, combine video into your ad.
• Third, get more assertive and visible with your ads!

These insights are discussed in the recently published edition of the Eyeblaster Benchmarks. This edition provides a summary of the results of campaigns that were served by Eyeblaster between Q1 2009 and Q4 2009. To produce these benchmarks, Eyeblaster Research analyzed the results from 170 billion impressions delivered in six different regions and more than 50 different countries.

To download the full edition of the Eyeblaster benchmarks, follow this link.

Ariel Geifman | Research Analyst

While the business of operating an airline has remained more or less the same in the last decade, the business of selling airline tickets and filling up the seats has changed dramatically. In the past, travel agents typically acted as intermediaries between passengers and airlines. Nowadays, many ‘in the flesh’ travel agents have been replaced by browsers, online travel agents and airline websites.

In a recent survey, about 34% of US internet users indicated that they used the Internet to research airfares. According to the survey, this is the most popular travel related research done online. An industry study indicates that 2007 was the first year in which online spending on travel in the US has exceeded offline spending.

What better place to advertise airlines than right at the point of sale—online? Airlines are responding quickly and are expected to double their spending on online marketing from $2.5 billion to over $5.0 billion in five years, according to Forrester.

For the purpose of this study, Eyeblaster Research crunched the results of hundreds of millions of airline impressions worldwide. The results suggest that using Rich Media more than doubles the direct response effectiveness of airline campaigns, both in terms of CTR and of Conversion Rate. Homepages, travel, news and finance have the best performance in terms of conversion rate.

For branding campaigns, news, travel, finance, and instant messaging are the best performing environments in terms of Dwell Rate. This is good news for airlines, as news, finance and particularly travel tend to draw more affluent crowds.

Analyzing the frequency of Standard Banners suggests that the optimal direct response frequency for airlines is ~4 impressions. Still, about 82% of users were underexposed, which means that there is still room to improve targeting and increase the size of campaigns.

Regardless of the aim of the campaigns or the formats and placements, online display advertising offers an indispensable strategic advantage for Airlines. Display advertising is a flexible tool to generate instant demand for yield management. It is now easy, with tools such as Smart Versioning, to align ads and messaging with empty flights, even at the last minute. With the economics of airlines, occupying an empty seat on a flight that is about to take off contributes directly to the bottom line. With this in mind, online display advertising can bring ROI to new heights.

For the full research Digital Advertising for Airlines: Book Every Seat – Even the Middle Ones, click here to download.

Ariel Geifman, Research Analyst