Asked the top 3 benefits of online advertising when compared to offline advertising, 23% of respondents to a Marin Software survey [pdf] conducted by Forrester Consulting said the most important benefit was online’s more accurate targeting. The survey of North American marketers who spend a minimum of $100,000 per year on paid search also found that respondents value online’s measurability and efficiency, but are less enthusiastic about its conversion rates and access to customer response data relative to offline advertising.
Survey results released in March 2012 by DataXu found that among decision-makers that had shifted their budgets from traditional to online advertising, the most common reason cited was increased measurability and accountability (20%), slightly ahead of increased customer engagement (18%) and lower cost of customer acquisition (16%).
Online Advertisers Value Targeted Media
Delving into the marketing programs that the Marin Software survey respondents find important to help them achieve their business goals, the study notes that targeted media are the most highly valued, with traditional paid search (78% rating important), audience buying (73%), retargeting (68%), and contextual display ads (65%) at the top of the list. At the other end of the spectrum, just 30% ranked pay-per-click ads on social networks like Facebook as important to their goals.
The survey also reveals that almost half of the marketers outsource management of their paid search programs to an agency partner, with the rest managing them in-house using either purchased tools (17%) or by using proprietary tools or ones provided free by a publisher (37%).
About the Data: The Marin Software survey was conducted in December 2012 among 104 North American marketers with a minimum yearly spend of $100,000 on paid search.
