IAR Bits and Bytes

IAB Signs VeriSign for Cross-Media Study

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced on Thursday that VeriSign would participate in the IAB’s cross-media optimization research project.

VeriSign, which offers Internet security and domain-registration services, will be the first business-to-business participant in the research series, which studies the effectiveness of increasing online’s role in multi-media ad campaigns.

VeriSign will use the Dynamic Logic cross-media methodology to examine its first integrated branding campaign, which includes trade print and online advertising.

So far, McDonald’s, Colgate-Palmolive, Unilever and Kimberly-Clarke have published cross-media studies. Dutch bank ING will complete its study in the fall, while Universal Home Video and drug maker AstraZeneca are readying studies.

The IAB has put great emphasis on the need to build a body of evidence to prove that traditional advertisers can benefit from moving more money to the Internet from other media, notably television. The cross-media research, which has shown that shifting money to online increases brand awareness and purchase intent in every case, is part of that effort.

Earlier this year, the IAB took the results of the first batch of case studies on a two-week, seven-city road show. MSN undertook a similar road show with its own best practices initiative.

Univision Touts Cross-Media Benefits

Spanish language broadcaster Univision Communications has released the findings of a recent study of its cross-media promotions done with its online arm, which show that advertisers that used both media benefited from higher brand awareness and purchase intent.

Nielsen Media Research conducted the study in March through phone interviews. The researcher found that Univision.com users, as compared to the overall population of Spanish-dominant and bilingual Internet users, have 17 percent increased brand awareness and 54 percent higher purchase intent regarding products advertised both online and on the TV network. Overall, Univision.com users have 12 percent higher brand awareness and 30 percent higher purchase intent.

The Univision-commissioned study is more evidence of the effectiveness of cross-media plans. The Interactive Industry Bureau has trumpeted this through a series of studies done with the likes of McDonald’s, Unilever, and Kimberly-Clark. Dutch bank ING, which recently signed on to a $30 million cross-media promotion plan with AOL, plans to release the results of a cross-media study in the fall.

Marketers have paid increasingly close attention to the booming U.S. Hispanic market. Early this year, the Census Bureau estimated that Hispanics now top blacks as America’s most populous minority group at 37 million. Hispanic consumers are estimated to have a combined annual purchasing power of $450 billion, according to DRI/McGraw Hill.

Spanish-language TV has received most of marketers’ attention. According to estimates by CMR, in 2002 advertising revenue for Spanish-language TV grew 20 percent to $1.9 billion. But Univision has seen success at its online arm, which grew its advertising base by 68 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier. The site boasts a variety of big-name advertisers, such as Coca-Cola, General Motors, and Johnson & Johnson.

Lightningcast Unveils Internet Commercial Research

Rich media provider Lightningcast trumpeted the results of research showing the effectiveness of streaming-media Internet commercials, which showed a big increase in brand awareness and purchase intent.

The study, done by Dynamic Logic for a Lightning Cast campaign run Hyundai, polled the opinions of 628 Internet users, roughly a third of whom saw a 30-second Lightningcast streaming ad on Microsoft Windows Media video streams. Dynamic Logic found the group exposed to the ad for the Hyundai Tiburon coupe had 80 percent higher brand awareness and were 46 percent more likely to buy the car.

“The audience is self-selecting to view a stream,” said Tom Des Jardins, Lightningcast’s chief executive. “They’re expecting an experience.”

Lightningcast undertook similar studies for campaigns it has run for Cingular Wireless and Dentyne Ice. Those studies, done in 2001 and 2002, also showed sizable gains in brand awareness and purchase intent.