Keeping it in Context
OTX has completed a study that shows the context of an online ad’s placement has a lot to do with its effectiveness.
Commissioned by ContextWeb, creator of ADSDAQ, the study shows that ads placed on relevant pages of neutral topic websites outperformed ads placed on general topic sites and equaled the effectiveness of ads placed on relevant sites.
Here’s what they did, and what it means: OTS tested the effectiveness of electronic ads placed in three different environments. The first was a consumer electronics site, then the technology section of a newspaper site and the opinion section of the same newspaper site. The study was conducted with 600 men and women between the ages of 18 and 65.
The ad in the technology section beat out the ad in the opinion section and equalled that of the ad on the electronics website.
Ads in the tech section also led to greater ad recognition and greater brand recognition than ads placed in the opinion section.
“This study demonstrates that context definitely matters, and selecting the page where the online advertising appears is much more important than simply selecting an appropriate website,” said Anand Subramanian, CEO of ContextWeb. “ContextWeb’s unique ability to give control to advertisers to place their ads in the correct context of a page, wherever the page appears, allows those advertisers to meet potential customers in places that are most effective for their dollars.”
While one could intuitively infer it is more effective to adverstise for movies on an entertainment website or page, it is interesting that the ad and brand recognition was significantly greater in the relevant section over the opinion section. After all, the study’s subjects did see exactly the same ad in both places.
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