Brand Building and Types of Websites

Research released in early January by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) uses brand metric data from Dynamic Logic to show that ads placed on content sites get better results than those on portals or sold through ad networks.


For example, the aided brand awareness metric was up by 38% on OPA member sites—that is, content sites—versus the following:

Down 9% on portals
Down 19% on ad networks
Down 7% against control data (Dynamic Logic’s MarketNorms database)


Let’s see how much sense that makes. Should brand advertising actually be more effective on content sites? Or is that just the OPA promulgating research that makes its member sites look good?

In the offline world, such as on TV, greater brand effectiveness is affected by how people react to the programming. In fact, the more the audience is engaged because they value the TV content, the more responsive they are to the ads viewed.

However, on the Web, the mindset of people varies far more than when they watch TV.

For example, cruising through a portal to check weather, e-mail and headlines tends to create what you might call a “fast-food” mentality, with little time to stop and notice what’s being consumed.

Or when people use search engines, while they might be clicking even more rapidly than when on a portal, they often have a focused intent—based on their search—which lends itself to effective paid search advertising.

In contrast, when people linger a while on a content site—to read an article or view a video, say—they tend to pay more attention to the Webpage environment, even if only marginally.

Furthermore, audience reaction to advertising tends to be colored by the company it keeps. In this sense, as with TV, the more that people value the online content they consume, the more positive their reactions to surrounding advertising. (At least that’s the tendency if ad clutter is avoided.)

So, in that sense, the new OPA study—“Improving Ad Performance Online”—contains what I call “duh” research, showing the importance of content sites to ad effectiveness. That is, it’s a definitely useful study that confirms what common-sense thinking already knows is likely true.