An Expensive Test To See How Well Online Ads Work
from the apparently,-they-work dept
One online retailer decided they wanted to judge how well their online advertising program was working, so, as a test, they pulled all their online advertising from April through July. They discovered that the online advertising seems to be pretty important, as their online sales fell 45%. Ouch. Sounds like an expensive “test”. Since putting the ads back online, online sales are starting to creep up again, but are still below previous levels. Prior to the test, online sales accounted for 26% of their overall revenue, so the loss of online ads apparently cut out quite a chunk of their sales volume. Of course, if they’re spending too much on the ads, this doesn’t matter – and the company did realize that online ads seem to give them a lower return than offline ads, saying that for every $1 in online advertising they spend, they’re getting $2 in sales. While not a perfect study, it does shed some light on the impact of internet advertising.
Comments on “An Expensive Test To See How Well Online Ads Work”
Ad tracking, duh
Maybe they should have looked at their referrer logs first, or somehow tracked sales with a dedicated phone number.
I’m an independent web developer and it’s an uphill battle to convince my clients to invest in measuring their ROI, or even general site usage.
Top-line lunacy
So either they have over a 100% mark-up just to cover their online advertising, or else they lose money on every online sale.