Microsoft Advertising Institute

Microsoft Advertising Institute publishes Digital Marketing Insights (DMIs), a series of publications by digital marketing experts that help our customers improve their digital marketing effectiveness. Many of these findings are also made available to the digital marketing industry at large. Each DMI is designed to help marketers more successfully build value with their customers, throughout the customer lifecycle--from awareness to acquisition and from retention to growth. 

Digital Marketing Insight Spotlight

The Planner’s Digital Dilemma

Are the 10 million impressions on one site more effective in reaching your target audience than the 7 million impressions on another site? This report from Microsoft Advertising Institute examines why the internet’s mass appeal isn’t being used for brand advertising, and how traditional media planning can be brought online to solve the planner’s dilemma.
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The Planner’s Digital Dilemma

Past Digital Marketing Insights

The Long Road to Conversion: The Digital Purchase Funnel

Research shows that conversion reporting based on the "last ad" standard fails to credit the multiple digital touchpoints in a consumer’s online history. This report digs deeper into the idea of multiple touchpoints that occur before a conversion, looking specifically into touchpoints by “time.”


Beyond Search: Illuminating the Alltel Wireless Sales Funnel

The emergence of new media channels stresses the need for more sophisticated standards to measure engagement and ROI. This study compares conversion reporting based on the “last ad” standard to the Engagement Mapping model, revealing the surprising effect that multiple touchpoints have on conversions.


Measuring ROI Beyond the Last Ad

Microsoft Advertising Institute examines the bias created by the “last ad” model and reveals sites that delivered reach and engagement to conversions but did not receive applicable credit in the purchasing funnel—and have the most to gain from new conversion attribution paradigms like Engagement Mapping.

The Combined Impact of Search and Display Advertising
Where can you find your customer? Try the intersection of search and display. This study quantifies the synergies between display and sponsored search campaigns and the benefits of analyzing them together.

The Impact of Overlap
Reaching consumers across multiple sites boosts your ROI. This report illustrates the amount of overlap that is occurring in the marketplace and begins to reveal the impact of that duplication on conversions.
Webcast Podcast

Paying for Navigational Search
This analysis from Microsoft Advertising Institute provides statistics on the prevalence of navigational search as well as insight into navigational behaviors.
Webcast Podcast

Search Conversion Rates by Daypart
Paid search is one of today's most competitive and tightly managed digital marketplaces, yet one of the simplest and most powerful strategies is often overlooked or underutilized. This report considers sponsored search conversion rates by daypart, including industry-specific benchmarks.

Optimal Frequency: The Impact of User Frequency on Conversion Rates
First impressions count. For most advertisers, conversion rates are highest on the first impression. This study focuses on optimal frequency from a direct response view, and details how to increase campaign efficiencies to deliver leads and sales.
 
Online Media Conversion Rates by Daypart
One of the most interesting and actionable factors impacting the effectiveness of advertising in generating sales is time of day. This report examines the influence of time of day on conversion rates for display media.

On Demand Digital Video Duration
The digitization of traditional media and the new metrics that are available as television becomes accountable is a hot topic in the world of marketing. Earlier research on rich media exposure tracking is expanded in this report, which takes a closer look at duration in digital video.

Cross Promotion Is Critical to VOD Success
This study quantifies the importance of cross-promotional spots to increase video-on-demand (VOD) viewership, and shows how time of day impacts performance.

Rank Report: How Search Engine Rank Impacts Traffic
Multiple factors drive the overall ROI of a search engine marketing investment. The research presented here examines how one key factor—search engine rank—impacts traffic to a marketer’s web site.

Understanding the Impact of Cookie Deletion on Web Metrics
Microsoft Advertising Institute takes an in-depth look at the impact of cookie deletion on conversion tracking in this report.

The Hidden Cost of Pay-for-Performance Media
Advertisers paying CPA buys based on network reporting counts are often paying multiple times for the same conversion. This study reveals the source and magnitude of conversion duplication and arms advertisers with strategies to improve their performance deals.

Ad Creative or Media Placement: Which Is More Important When Optimizing Campaigns?
According to this study, conversion rates across media placements vary six times more than conversion rates across different ad creatives. Thus, optimizing media placements will impact a campaign more than optimizing creative alone.

Behavior-Based Media Planning
Marketers have long depended on demographic and psychographic profiles when planning advertising campaigns. This study compares traditional planning methods with behavior-based planning, which bases site recommendations on where customers are on the internet.

The Evolution of Online Advertising Metrics
Microsoft Advertising Institute examines the correlation between Cost per Revenue and Cost per Sale, with the goal of understanding how CPR might change media optimization decisions.

Validating the Combined Approach to Online Reach Prediction
This study confirms that advertisers can confidently use a combination of user-centric and server-centric data to forecast online reach of web sites in a media plan.

Online Reach Across Multiple Sites
Microsoft Advertising Institute dispels the myth that advertisers commonly reach the same consumer more than once on multiple sites in a given campaign.
 
Finding the Missing Piece in Online Frequency
Microsoft Advertising Institute demonstrates the importance of frequency distribution in online marketing by examining data from a typical online campaign.

Introducing Microsoft BXD
This study introduces Brand Exposure Marketing—the length of time an individual is exposed to a given advertisement—and its importance to online marketing.

Engagement Mapping

Evaluate every touchpoint, not just the last. Typically, between 93 and 95 percent of audience engagements with online advertising receive no credit at all when advertisers review campaign ROI. That presents a substantial margin for missed opportunity.


Unlike the outdated "last ad" model that narrowly attributes 100 percent success to the most recent ad clicked, Engagement Mapping technology reveals the entire conversion funnel, enabling you to make more effective, more relevant decisions in your digital marketing.

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