The Pontiflex CPL Blog

According to a Nielsen Monitor Plus study, ad impressions were up 15% in the first quarter of 2008. Most of the growth was delivered by impressions allocated towards performance based advertising, particularly search engine marketing. These findings are largely consistent with the 2007 IAB PWC findings that show advertisers allocating a  majority of the spending towards performance based models.

In these tough economic times, consumers have felt the pinch and so have the advertisers.

While there was a slowdown in display, there was a strong increase in rich media advertisements.

From these reports, one can draw the following conclusions:

1. To be relevant, brand marketers need to move away from metrics such as click-throughs and impressions. These metrics are remnants of the jpeg/gif and flash banner era. An ad for branding should seek to engage. Advertisers should deploy rich media banners and demand pricing models from publishers that require them to pay only for tangible “engagement” actions. Rich media advertisements should also incorporate lead capture mechanisms, so as to keep the focus on performance.

2. In tough economic times, brand marketers need to engage consumers at multiple touchpoints, before making the sale. Venues such as community sites, social network groups and e-newsletters are ideal venues for them to show off their brand in a vibrant manner. As a result, brand marketers need to stay focused on building quality email and site registrant databases. This would require them to delve into metrics such as Cost-per-Lead and conversion rates, once the sole domain of traditional direct response marketers.