If you are in the same situation as most of the Online Marketing Executives I have spoken with, then at some point, and most likely on more than one occasion, you have been called on to explain why you are paying the price you are paying for the conversions you receive from display advertising. This question is not only reasonable, it is necessary in order to drive online improvement. So if you have not confronted it yet, be prepared!

The truth is that if we look isolated at the cost per sale for our display ads, then we will often be severely challenged in justifying the ROI. However, over the last couple of years companies like ComScore and Microsoft have produced a number of research studies pointing to the synergetic effect that display and search marketing have on each other. In other words; by running display advertising you increase the performance of your search marketing.

Now it is all fine and nice that we can find research that points to this effect, but I believe that we should be able to measure and document this for our own marketing activities. The real question is; “Do YOU know how YOUR display ads are affecting other channels?”
To help our customers answer this question, Traceworks has started a number of campaign attribution projects, using Headlight to identify the indirect effect that display advertising has on other organic and paid traffic sources. We want to help you understand how your customers engage with your different marketing messages and what your actual sales process looks like.

I look forward to sharing some of these Online Marketing Insights with you later this year and if you have concrete experience with campaign attribution and engagement mapping, then by all means feel free to speak up and share your thoughts.
…and of course, if you are struggling with that question from upper management “what exactly are we getting for the money YOU spend on display!”, then contact us and let us help you provide the concrete answer.