The Environment Matters (To Your Media Buy)

We spend hours making thoughtful, strategic and highly targeted media plans for our clients.  We investigate the media spaces and crank out the numbers all the while focusing on the online spaces that are rich content areas – the ones that matter most to our desired audience.

With expanded inventories and audience reach, online ad networks are seemingly a more valuable option to the traditional way of thinking about and buying online advertising.

Marketers can reach a desire audience across a number of sites in a network for relatively the same cost as buying a placement on a content specific site.  Getting more and paying less, sounds like an enticing offer… or is it?

A new study reaffirms what we’ve been saying all long – content matters!

The Online Publishers Association (OPA) recently analyzed over 6,000 campaigns comparing ad effectiveness on branded content sites versus ad networks.  Results found the ads on the content sites outperformed those on ad networks, showing significant effectiveness in raising awareness, creating message association, generating brand favorability and driving purchase intent.  In fact, in all areas measured, ad networks performed weaker than content sites.

The article notes that “… in the highly coveted 18 to 34-year-old audience, those exposed to ads on ad networks resulted in a negative impact on purchase intent.  The group with the most buying power isn’t buying”

Negative impact? Those media dollars are better off flushed down the toilet.

Sure, we want to achieve maximum efficiency for our spend, but at the same time efficiency can’t come at the expense of effectiveness.  The environment and context in which we place our ads matters – to both our customers and in turn to us.

To learn more about the process we take to ensure effective use of your media dollars, visit our Media Planning and Buying page.

Flickr photo courtesy of El Bostonian