Less Than Half of Advertisers Use Online Display Ads for Branding

From our friends at the Center for Media Research comes the following, cut and pasted in its entirety becasue I am too lazy to edit today. My comment? All advertising--even lead generation efforts--had better be about building your brand or you are wasting your money.

"Marketing Sherpa, in it's inaugural Online Advertising Handbook with 2008 Benchmarks, using both primary and secondary research, reports that less than half of advertisers use online display ads for branding purposes, despite overall increase in branding effectiveness of online ads, low click rates getting lower, and 80% of all clicks coming from the same 20% of all Internet users. According to the report, to choose an advertising strategy that will affect ROI, not clicks, marketers surveyed said the two tests they ran that were most likely to "significantly increase ROI" were online ad effectiveness studies and online focus groups.

The included eyetracking study shows that most individuals don‘t see most ads served to them -- especially ads served below the fold. And, says the Executive Summary, media delivery reports rarely include information on whether, or what percentage of, a media buy was served above or below the fold. According to the included chart of placement results, just being above the fold makes a significant difference.

The study notes that advertisers rate the ability to use behavioral and contextual targeting to be important as key ROI drivers, and quotes InsightExpress research, showing that targeting is a key driver of effectiveness and that ads are more effective in 2007 than they were previously.

The summary concludes that the key takeaway for advertisers is that the context in which an ad is served is just as important as the ad itself.

28 Million Mobile Subscribers Responded to At Least One Mobile Ad

From the venerable Center for Media Research comes this recent post on the troubling (to me, at least) continuing breach of the cellphone by aggressive, and apparantly successful efforts to induce mobile users to respond to display advertising on their devices.
As a marketer and media professional, I applaud the development of a new medium that can help sell our customers' products and services. But as a heavy smartphone user (for email, text messaging, web browzing for specific info like weather, directions and news), I must admit to annoyance at being pitched on my 2-inch screen when I am looking for something specific. We'll get used to it in time, I suppose.
Anyway, here is the statfest from Nielsen as reported by CMR:
"According to a new report from The Nielsen Company, twenty-three percent (58 million) of all U.S. mobile subscribers say they've been exposed to advertising on their phones in the past 30 days. Half (51% or 28 million) of all data users who recall seeing mobile advertising in the previous 30 days say they responded to a mobile ad.The bi-annual Mobile Advertising Report from Nielsen Mobile, of more than 22,000 active mobile data users, reveals that:
The number of data users who recalled seeing mobile advertising between the second and fourth quarters of 2007 increased 38% (from 42 to 58 million subscribers)
Teen data users (ages 13-17) were the most likely age segment to recall seeing mobile advertising (46% recalled seeing some type of mobile advertisement, compared to 29% of all data users)
Asian-Americans and African-Americans are more likely to recall mobile advertising (42% and 40%, respectively) than all data users
26% of those who saw an ad responded at least once by sending an SMS text-message, the most popular ad response. 9% say they've used click-to-call to respond to a mobile ad
32% of data users said they are open to mobile advertising if it lowers their overall bill
13% (18% of males) said they are open to mobile advertising if it improves the media and content currently available
14% said they are already open to mobile advertising so long as it is relevant to their interests
23% expect to see more mobile advertising in the future (up from just 15% in Q1 2007)
While just 10% of data users said they think advertising on their mobile devices is acceptable, an increasing number of mobile users appear to understand the value proposition of ad-supported mobile content, says the report
The report concludes that advertising researchers must examine the ways in which audiences are and are not willing to engage with mobile advertising, as media companies and marketers explore the unique ways they can interact with consumers supporting mobile media content through advertising revenues."