The time consumers spend interacting with online ads is the best indicator of their benefits to a brand, according to online measures of brand engagement.
New research from Microsoft Advertising proves a clear connection between the level of active engagement a user has with an online ad and its subsequent impact on the brand. Online measures of brand engagement such as branded search term activity, visits to brand sites, and the number of pages viewed on those sites all increase significantly with a user’s active engagement with online advertising. The findings suggest that the success of brand campaigns can be reliably evaluated through the dwell scores.
The Dwell on Branding study, a collaboration with Eyeblaster and comScore, looked at the total dwell scores achieved by online brand advertising, which are calculated by combining the amount of time a user spends actively engaging with an ad and the proportion of ads they engage with. The study then compared the available online measures of brand engagement for campaigns with high and low total dwell scores. Ads with higher dwell scores consistently demonstrated a greater positive impact on brands.
In proving that greater levels of online engagement lead to uplifts in measurable brand benefits, the study provides yet more evidence that click-throughs alone are an unsatisfactory means of measuring advertising performance for brand advertisers. The value of rich media advertising, and the longer dwell times that rich media ads consistently deliver, is particularly likely to be undervalued when effectiveness is solely measured in click-throughs. According to aggregated Eyeblaster data published in July 2009, consumers are 25 times more likely to spend meaningful time (an average of 53 seconds) with a rich media ad than to click on it.
Learn more about how Microsoft Advertising advocates new techniques for
measuring online advertising effectiveness with our
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