Beyond the last click – online advertising works!

Neil Sharman, head of research and analysis, Telegraph Media Group, reveals the effect of online advertising beyond last click; a campaign across both the Telegraph website and newspaper increases the number of online actions (searches for the advertised brand or visits to their site) by 13% …

The last time I was in these (web) pages I said that, as part of our programme to demonstrate that the Telegraph works, we hoped to add to “the growing proof that online branding works”.

We have heard the following questions a lot from advertising agencies: ‘Does branding advertising work online? Can I tell the effect other than just ‘last click’?’

On Nielsen’s 35,000 strong UKOM panel, which passively tracks online behaviour, telegraph.co.uk users are easily identified. We also ran a questionnaire with them to identify the Telegraph newspaper readers on the UKOM panel. Obviously there was some cross over. So now we know who, on this very useful panel, is part of our online and offline audience and who use both.

We then looked at the number of campaigns that ran over three months on both the website and in the newspaper (with 10%+ of spend online). This gave us 61 campaigns and we’ve identified people who are likely to have been exposed to them in Telegraph media.

Next we identified a group of people who were demographically and behaviourally matched to our online audience (using age, gender, social grade and internet use) but hadn’t used Telegraph media – that was control group one. We also identified control group two – people who were similarly matched to our newspaper group but who had not read Telegraph media either.

Now we have test and control groups, similar to those that might be used in a traditional awareness study. However, it wasn’t awareness that we were measuring but online behaviour. The UKOM panel passively monitors website visits and searches made. We wanted to see if those exposed to Telegraph media during the campaign period were more likely to visit the advertisers’ websites and search using their brand name than the control groups.

Of course, both the test and control groups could have been exposed to other parts of the same campaign in other media (and some campaigns had high spends in other media). They might also have visited the websites and made searches anyway, not down to advertising. However, the only difference between test and control groups, being so closely matched, was Telegraph exposure so any difference noted would be a measure of The Telegraph‘s ability to drive online behaviour.

Before revealing the results, I might add that any discernible difference would actually be a diluted version of the real ‘Telegraph effect’ as the online ads weren’t tagged so we’re measuring exposure similarly to how it’s measured in offline media – as propensity to see. Had the campaigns been tagged, the noted effect would most likely be greater.

The advantage of not tagging is that we could do 61 campaigns and this meant that, for the first time, we have a measure by ad category, not just a case study.

So, to the results…

The results show the increase in online actions defined as searches of the advertiser name and visits to their websites. There were many big advertisers on the study with high traffic sites so even a small increase means plenty of extra engagement.

The newspaper created a 4% increase in online actions. Telegraph.co.uk created a 29% increase in online actions.

What does this mean for those newspaper advertisers thinking about adding our website to the campaign?

If they have an £80k campaign in print and add a £15k online campaign, that’s an additional 18% capital cost. Campaign reach is increased by 80%. Adult CPT is reduced by 35%.

Increase in online actions improves from a 4% uplift (using Telegraph print only) to 13% (the effect of the campaign across both newspaper and Telegraph site).

Of course, online action is just one way an advertiser might measure success – others might include awareness, footfall, sales etc. Online behaviour is an extra dimension.

And remember we can break this information down into categories, which makes it unique – 61 campaigns and eight categories. More than a case study, it more broadly shows that online branding (and the Telegraph) works.