NFB, Sympatico do online advertising research to show effectiveness

Sympatico/MSN is hoping to show media buyers that online advertising is about branding rather than a direct response medium as many of them perceive. The portal giant recently concluded the first of several upcoming research projects in conjunction with New York-based Dynamic Logic and Canadian partners the National Film Board (NFB) and the Internet Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB Canada) to test user response to video ads on the Sympatico/MSN portal. Results from the study should be available within a month. The study is in the same vein as IAB Canada’s collection of Cross-Media Optimization Studies (CMOS). The CMOS studies are intended to provide media buyers and advertisers with proof that online advertising should be considered an important part of media campaigns. CMOS studies so far have researched advertising efforts by RBC Insurance, General Motors, Canadian Tire and one or two others. The goal of the studies is to test for a diminution point on various media returns to help advertisers choose the right media mix. In several years of running those studies, a picture is quickly emerging of an online medium that can be effectively used for branding. Dynamic Logic has been involved in many of the studies in North America, including in partnership with the U.S. Internet Advertising Bureau and the American Research Foundation. That extensive history of testing new online possibilities is cited by Sympatico/MSN VP of sales and marketing Patrick Lauzon as the reason why Ma Bell chose the company to conduct its study of the NFB campaign. Lauzon says this study, and future ones the portal division already has planned, will help show advertisers that the right mix of ad buying has shifted as more and more Canadians turn to the web as a way to consume media. "A lot of people are watching less TV," he says, "and that time spent is now online, or even on their mobile phones. There’s a lot of new ways to consume media, consume information, and just for example, even gaming. Gaming’s taking a lot of attention, and there is a huge time spent by teenagers on gaming. And, yet, advertisers are still buying in the same way or the same formats as they were buying five or 10 years ago, which does not make sense. They’ve lost some efficiencies and they need to understand that TV is not reaching as, maybe, as many people as they were reaching before, or it might not be reaching the same demo that they were reaching before. They need to shift their media buy in different ways. "It doesn’t mean to stop buying TV – not at all – or stop buying print or stop buying radio or stop buying the web. But understand for the audience that they’re trying to reach, how could they optimally use their dollars to get the best reach for their dollar. What we’re trying to do with CMOS and the Dynamic Logic studies on Sympatico/MSN is to demonstrate that online has its place - should not take all the budget, but it definitely has its place. Right now it has an unfair place, because 15%-plus of people’s time spent consuming media is spent online, and online is only getting about 4% of total ad budget. We’ve matured in the past year quite a bit, the past year and a half, but there’s still a lot to be done on the online side."

NFB, Sympatico do online advertising research to show effectiveness

News | 05/30/2005 4:00 am EDT

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