Apparently, in-text advertisements, those seemingly annoying little ads that pop up when someone moves a cursor over a hot-linked piece of text in an article, can create impactful campaigns. According to a comScore study, Kontera’s in-text targeted ads delivered five times greater brand awareness than traditional display ads, and twice as much lift in brand purchase intent.

The study suggests 34% of consumers strongly felt Kontera in-text ads “clutter the page,” compared with 61% for interstitials, 52% for video ads, 45% for rectangle ads, and 36% for banners.

Twenty-one percent of consumers strongly agreed the in-text ads are “related to content,” compared with 14% for rectangle ads, 14% for interstitials, 10% for video, 15% for Google text ads, and 11% for banners.

Thirty three percent say in-text ads a less intrusive ad format, compared with 40% for rectangle ads, 53% for video ads, 63% for interstitial ads, and 29% for banners. Read more at www.mediapost.com

See more at www.dataxu.com

The Internet is the fastest growing segment of the paid product placement industry, according to a new outlook from media industry economic analyst PQ Media. While still one of the smallest product placement mediums in the branded entertainment category, paid product placements grew 11.1% to $40 million in 2009, a year in which the overall marketplace declined 2.8% to $3.61 billion, according to the PQ Media Global Branded Entertainment Marketing Forecast 2010-2014 being released today.Read more at www.mediapost.com

Criticism of behaviorally targeted ads by consumers, privacy advocates and the government has led to uncertainty in the market, which eMarketer expects to reach nearly $1.13 billion this year. Research from the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) indicates the high value of those ads, for both marketers and publishers.

The study, which looked at ads run on member networks during 2009, showed that among users who clicked on a behaviorally targeted ad, 6.8% converted. That compared with only 2.8% of those who clicked on a run-of-network ad. Clickers found behavioral ads more relevant, but the NAI did not study how likely they were to click in the first place, a key component of effectiveness.

CPM rates were likewise significantly higher for behaviorally targeted ads, with the average price of a behaviorally targeted ad 2.68 times greater than that of a run-of-network ad. Retargeting also provided higher CPMs.

See more at www.emarketer.com

See more at www.emarketer.com

Tying an online ad or piece of email marketing directly to a customized landing page that acknowledges the initial communication and has a specific call to action can improve lift by 40%, according to a survey by CrownPeak.

Product-specific advertising performed better than its holiday-themed counterpart, though many retailers still failed to direct the majority of ads to a clear consumer call to action.

50% of product-specific advertisements linked either to a canned “search” or “category” page, or the website home page.

Some advertisers - primarily content aggregators - directed ads to specific landing pages, which then featured advertisements for other providers of the product. Read more at www.marketingcharts.com

There is a pronounced difference between open rates for e-mails that include a coupon offer and those that do not. Open rates of around 24% to 25% for coupon e-mails dropped to just 16% to 18% for noncoupon campaigns, according to Experian.

Higher open rates for coupon offers translated into higher click rates as well, though the difference was much smaller. E-mails with coupons that could be used online were most likely to be clicked, at 4%.

Experian also reported that 80% of online coupon mailings saw higher transaction-to-click rates and transaction rates than noncoupon campaigns. And 78% of that group also earned higher revenues per e-mail. Read more at www.emarketer.com

Online marketers had better not be negligent. Good creative makes a successful campaign, but data from Dynamic Logic suggests that the worst-performing campaigns can actually negatively affect brand metrics.

Top-performing campaigns, by contrast, boosted online ad awareness, message association and aided brand awareness by more than 8 percentage points each. Read more at www.emarketer.com

The Online Publishers Association and ComScore, both seriously interested parties, did a study of 80 campaigns for 50 top brands which was tracked across the top 200 highly trafficked sites and concluded:  1. The 80-20 rule applies to clicks. Eighty percent of the clicks come from 20 percent of the people exposed to the ads. At very best only 1 in 5 ads draws a click whether that was the intention of the ad or not. 2. Displays Ads Prompt Search. Queries for terms exposed in display ads were search 50% more often a week after exposure and 38% more often even 4 weeks after exposure. If you see something that intersects your interests or your personal wish list, you are more likely to search for it directly when you’re ready to buy. Direct and brand advertising interact synergistically online and offline.   3. Display Ads Drive Site Engagement. Those exposed to ads spent 34 minutes per unique visitor on the sites exposed. This is hard to believe in terms of the time spent on site and the amount of “lift”. Maybe it just measures the vagaries of site architecture and navigation. 4. Brand Exposure Bumps Up eCommerce. Those exposed to brand ads spent 7% more on average when they bought. This feels like advertising orthodoxy; exposure drives awareness, consideration and purchase. It’s possible that added impressions convinces customers to trade up a little. Read more at blogs.imediaconnection.com

Research released by Dynamic Logic reveals that ads integrated into the content of the page are the most effective in driving online ad awareness and purchase intent. Based on 2,390 online display campaigns that took place over the past three years, the study found that half banners and rectangles were more effective than ads that frame the page such as leaderboards and skyscrapers. Ad Formats by Online Ad Awareness Format Size Delta % Impacted (Avg. +3.0) Rectangle 180×150 4.6 Half banner 234×60 4.4 Medium rectangle 300×250 2.7 Large rectangle 336×280 2.3 Wide skyscraper 160×600 2.0 Leaderboard 728×90 1.9 Skyscraper 120×600 1.9 Half page ad 300×600 1.8 Full banner 486×60 1.6 Button 120×90 - 0.6 Source: Dynamic Logic MarketNorms, Q1 2009 (N=3,806,527, Delta= Exposed control) Read more at www.mediapost.com

“One of the biggest problems in online advertising today is that, unfortunately, strategy and consideration of branding goals is often an after-thought in decisions about creative format,” Mallon said. “Instead, the three factors that drive decisions are: the fixed percent of media budget allocated to ad serving fees, which creatives can be developed in time to meet deadlines, and familiarity/comfort with flash ads.”

See more at www.dynamiclogic.com

More US adults use the internet than they use doctors for obtaining health and medical information.

Consumers are much more likely to begin their quest for health information with a search engine rather going directly to a website.

Consumers who visit product sites are nearly three times more likely than the average US adult to request prescriptions by name from their doctors.

When consumers use search engines for pharmaceutical or health information online, they are most likely to search by the name of a specific condition/disease or the name of a specific product.

The most common situation for which they use a search engine for this purpose is when they have symptoms for a condition. Read more at www.marketingcharts.com

Your ads are often not selling the products that you designed them to sell. We have found that upwards of 48.38% percent of the time people end up buying a product different than the the one featured on ad they clicked on, and upwards of 11.28% of the time they bought a similar product, but not exactly the same product as the ad they clicked on.

For each keyword and product combination we looked at, we placed them in to one of three buckets: Exact, similar and unrelated. “Exact” would mean they purchased exactly the same product or product category of the ad they clicked on. “Similar” would be if they looked for XYZ sleeping bag, but purchased ABC sleeping bag, meaning they still purchased a sleeping bag, but it was a different brand or model from their search. “Unrelated” represented when the users search had no relation to what they ultimately purchased. After conducting this analysis, we found the following information: Read more at searchengineland.com