comScore and dunnhumbyUSA Research Shows Online Advertising Lifts In-Store CPG Brand Sales By an Average of 21%
Monday, October 31, 2011
ComScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, and dunnhumbyUSA, a global leader in building brand value for consumer goods and retail companies, today released results of multiple studies measuring the offline sales impact of online display advertising for consumer packaged goods (CPG) advertisers. Retail sales were measured by analytically linking the permission-based comScore panel of one million U.S. Internet users to their anonymous loyalty card in-store purchase data provided by dunnhumbyUSA; no identifiable personal data was disclosed. By comparing the in-store brand buying of households exposed to online advertising with that of households not exposed, it was possible to determine the impact of online advertising campaigns. The results of the studies indicate that exposure to online display ads can lead to improved in-store sales for CPG brands.“Effective advertising has always been about increasing awareness, favorability and purchase intent in order to increase in-store conversion,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “After several years of conducting advertising effectiveness research for CPG brands, we are learning how digital campaigns can lift sales in retail stores. It’s now clear that online ad campaigns should be an integral part of any CPG marketer’s integrated communications strategy.”
“The comScore dunnhumbyUSA research highlights the potential impact of an integrated, customer-driven approach across channels,” added Matthew Keylock, Senior Vice President, New Business Development & Partnerships at dunnhumbyUSA. “With these results we are one step closer to a more comprehensive understanding of what motivates shoppers to buy and how online advertising can play a significant role along the path to purchase.”
CPG Campaigns Show Median Offline Sales Lift of 21 Percent
An analysis of multiple CPG online ad campaigns that involved comparing the offline buying of households exposed to advertising with the buying behavior of households who were not exposed revealed a median in-store sales lift of 21 percent among the exposed households, with five out of every six campaigns generating a positive sales lift. Approximately 70 percent of campaigns generated a double-digit sales lift, and more than 40 percent generated lifts of at least 30 percent.
| U.S. Offline Sales Lift for CPG Brands Among Households Exposed to Online Advertising Compared to Households Not Exposed Studies Conducted 2008 – 2010 Source: comScore AdEffx and dunnhumbyUSA | |
| Offline Sales Lift | Percent of Studies |
| 0% | 17% |
| 1-10% | 14% |
| 11-20% | 19% |
| 21-30% | 10% |
| 31-40% | 17% |
| 41-50% | 10% |
| 50%+ | 14% |
Lorraine Twohill - Brand Genius
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Congrats to AdWeek's newest brand genius Lorraine Twohill.
From the article:
Let other marketing executives worry about how consumers perceive their brands. For Google’s Lorraine Twohill, it’s about inviting users to help create hers.
“We’re the only company on the planet that lets others play with our brand,” says Twohill, who was named Google’s vp of global marketing in 2009. “We stand for something that’s very unique and personal with users. There’s a trust there. The users feel like they own our brand.”
Using Google Insights for Search to Analyze Ethnic Restaurant Trends
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Last week at my birthday dinner at an excellent Chicago Korean restaurant (San Goo Gab San), a friend mentioned that ethnic food, especially the cuisines of Asia and Africa, has become increasingly accessible and popular in the Chicago area since he first moved there in the 1980s. This isn’t a revelation. There are clearly more ethnic places in the Windy City than there were when we were young. According to one account, in 1970 there was just one Indian restaurant in all of Chicago and now there’s a buffet on every corner.
It was the discussion that followed the comment that got me thinking. The dinner attendees started speculating about which cuisines have grown the most in popularity, and whether Korean food has become more widely available, or grown more in popularity than Indian food. Some enterprising guests even started speculating about which cuisines were “poised to pop” – which ethnic foods would become as popular 30 years from now as Chinese food is today. Everyone had an opinion, but no one had any data.
Being an analytical chap, I decided to see if Google’s enormous query database could help us answer these burning (or should I say spicy?) questions. The tool that I used, Google Insights for Search, is a publically accessible tool that allows you to compare indexed search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames. You can find it at: http://www.google.com/insights/search/.
I used query volume for “Chinese Restaurant, Indian Restaurant,” etc. as a proxy for a cuisine’s popularity. While this is not a perfect way of measuring the popularity of ethnic food, it’s a whole lot easier than hand counting every ethnic restaurant in the US, which would take a rather fun and tasty 100 years.
My research attempted to answer three questions: 1) Which ethnic cuisines are the most popular in the US, and how have these trends changed over time? 2) Which “emerging” or “frontier” cuisines are likely to become more accessible and beloved in the future? And 3) is the growth of ethnic food in America geographically broad-based, or limited to large, diverse cities? This analysis yielded some obvious conclusions and some that were more, shall we say, delectable.
Which ethnic cuisines are the most popular in the US?
Three cuisines, Italian, Chinese, and Mexican dominate America’s ethnic food landscape. From 2004-2008 (and likely before that as well), Italian food held a slim lead over the other two big players. In mid-2009, just as the world economy emerged from the depths of the financial crisis, Italian food lost its (probably) century-old lead to Chinese food. Shortly after, in mid-2010, Mexican food also jumped ahead of Italian food and, according to forecasts, will likely stay there.
If current trends hold, Italian food will have great difficulty regaining the title of America’s ethnic food king. As in so many other fields of contemporary human endeavor, the Chinese seem to have won out over the Western Europeans in the American food game.
Surprise, surprise – Kung Pao Chicken has stolen the crown from hapless Veal Parm.
Trailing behind the big three are Indian and Thai cuisine, which is easily available in most large cities and small towns all over the US. The demand for Indian and Thai food has remained steady for most of the decade, with the exception of a small bump of ~5% this year. I suspect that Indian and Thai food will be flat to up in the coming years unless their prices drop.
Two other well-established ethnic cuisines, Japanese and French, are worth noting. Unlike Chinese, Italian and Mexican ones, Japanese and French restaurants are usually more upscale. As you might expect, interest in this pricier fare has been flat for the past 8 years, and declined slightly during the recession. If things keep moving in their current direction, Indian and Thai cuisines may overtake Japanese food in popularity over the next decade, even with relatively flat growth.
Which” emerging” or “frontier” cuisines are candidates to become everyone’s favorites five years from now based on growth rate?
If I had to bet, I’d put my money on Korean and Vietnamese. Searches for Korean food have delivered an almost 40% increase since 2008 as bulgolgi tacos and kalbi enter the mainstream and Americans realize that Korean food really isn’t all that foreign to American palettes. Brazilian food, on the other hand, has taken a tumble, with interest dropping nearly 20% since the mid-2000s.
Vietnamese food, which is my personal favorite, has surged 20% in 3 years. It is now ahead of Brazilian food and has separated itself from Ethiopian and Cuban food to take firm command of second place among “frontier” cuisines. Vietnamese food is healthy, flavorful, and contains meats and noodles familiar to average Joe’s. As Vietnam’s economy continues to grow and more Americans visit Southeast Asia for vacation, the popularity of Pho and Bun is likely to grow. In fact, in this month’s issue of Fortune magazine, the founder and CEO of Chipotle announced that he is working on an idea for a fast casual Southeast Asian restaurant, which will launch sometime in the next 5 years. I think he’s on to something.
Brazil’s economy may be surging, but its cuisine isn’t.
Are ethnic restaurants growing in small towns (or just big cities)?
I was born in State College, Pennsylvania, a tiny Big Ten college town nestled in the mountains in the center of the state. When I was born in 1980, State College was home to few ethnic restaurants – we had a couple of Chinese places, a Mexican place called La Bamba, and not much else. Over the years, however, State College has become something of an ethnic food mecca. It’s now home to Indonesian, Vietnamese, Indian, Japanese, Korean, and many other world cuisines.
Is State College the exception or the rule? Have smaller towns and more remote states experienced an influx of new cuisines, or is the growth in ethnic foods’ popularity limited to large, diverse, immigrant-heavy cities like New York, San Francisco, and Chicago?
The answer is a resounding “no.” From Ohio to Nebraska to Idaho, ethnic food queries are growing. Try it for yourself!
You, too can use Google Insights for Search to find data that confirms or refutes your random hypotheses about everyday life - or even better, your business. Give it a shot: http://www.google.com/insights/search/.
Guest Post by Aaron Lichtig
Google’s Think Mobile Webinar featuring Avinash Kaushik - November 2nd
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Not sure how to most effectively leverage and measure your mobile marketing campaigns? Well, you’re not alone. While mobile is an incredible new way to distribute content and reach customers on the go, it also presents a unique challenge when it comes to measuring the impact of our mobile efforts (like applications, advertisements or mobile-optimized websites).
Tune in on November 2nd for Google’s Think Mobile webinar, Mobile Advertising: Right Person, Right Time, Right Message - Finally!, led by Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist. Avinash will share tips and best practices for mobile marketing campaigns, new metrics unique to mobile, and how best to measure mobile ads and websites.
Tune in on November 2nd for Google’s Think Mobile webinar, Mobile Advertising: Right Person, Right Time, Right Message - Finally!, led by Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist. Avinash will share tips and best practices for mobile marketing campaigns, new metrics unique to mobile, and how best to measure mobile ads and websites.
- When: Wednesday, November 2, 2011 9-10:30am PST/ 12-1:30pm EST
- How: Register here
Better together: new insights on display ad effectiveness across screens & multi-screen case study
Monday, October 10, 2011
Rich Media Display Ads Across Screens = Better Together
We partnered with Nielsen to measure the incremental impact of multi-screen advertising. In a study conducted at CBS’s Television City media lab run by Nielsen, study participants were asked to view related content across TV, PCs, smartphones and tablets. A 15-second video ad promoting Volvo's S60 sedan was shown to different groups of participants, with some people seeing no ads, and others seeing the ad on a different combinations of screens controlling for frequency.
The results clearly demonstrated the impact that multi-screen advertising has on branding. In the group that was exposed to TV ads alone, 50% of people correctly attributed the ad to Volvo. For groups that saw the ad across all screens -- TV, PC, smartphone and tablet -- the brand recall jumps dramatically to 74%.
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Similarly, only 22% of the group that was exposed to just the TV ad correctly recalled that the ad was for a 4-door sedan versus 39% of the group that saw the ad across all screens.
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We share this ad effectiveness research on the heels of our recently released internal data on multi-screen usage patterns revealing how users select the type of screen they are interacting with at different points in their day (New! Search data reveal that when the sun goes down, the tablets come out). The multi-screen opportunity is looming for advertisers so we wanted to share these new insights and showcase examples of successful integrated digital display campaigns.
Smart advertisers are already running integrated digital campaigns.
We’ve worked with hundreds of advertisers who have translated their desktop search and display goals to mobile and now to tablets. One example we’ve shared previously is the Animal Planet case study, and today we want to share a new example: adidas. adidas, in partnership with Carat, worked with Google to extend their video brand message to digital. With Google’s unique cross-channel capabilities, adidas was able to extend its video creative across all digital platforms, adapting them for engagement across PCs, smartphones and tablets.
Guest post by: Johanna Werther & Ben Chung, Google Mobile Ads Marketing
New Webinar: Mobile Advertising: Right Person, Right Time, Right Message - Finally!
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Do you ever feel like you don’t know how to most effectively leverage your mobile marketing campaigns? While mobile is an incredible new way to distribute content and reach customers, it also presents a unique challenge when it comes to measuring the impact of our mobile efforts (like applications, advertisements or mobile friendly websites).
We’d like to invite you to join us for a webinar discussing mobile marketing metrics, led by Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist. In this exciting webinar Avinash will share his tips and best practices for new metrics unique to mobile, as well as how best to measure mobile ads and websites.
We hope you can join us!
What: Mobile Advertising Webinar: Right Person, Right Time, Right Message - Finally!
When: Wednesday, November 2, 2011 9-10:30am PST/ 12-1:30pm EST
How: Register here
