Online advertisers are increasingly interested in using online ads to build their brands in addition to generating sales. However, advertisers need confidence that their online investments are helping achieve brand goals and metrics that demonstrate campaign success. Click-through rate alone is not a good measure of brand impact, as it shows little relationship with brand metrics or offline sales. Some evidence suggests brand metrics like purchase intent correlated with offline sales, indicating online ads can impact brands when measured properly. Advertisers must embrace new online branding metrics to optimize campaigns and outperform competitors.

1. Beyond Clicks and Impressions: Examining the
Relationship Between Online Advertising and
Brand Building
Executive Summary
Advertisers increasingly think of online as a place to build their brands, but need greater
confidence that their online investments are helping them achieve their brand goals. This
paper explores both the role of online ads in brand building, as well as the best metrics for
measuring the success of Internet ads against marketers’ goals. Leveraging Nielsen’s advertising
effectiveness solutions to examine this relationship, the following conclusions will be discussed
in this paper:
1. Click-through rate is not the right metric to measure brand impact – virtually no relationship
exists between clicks and brand metrics or offline sales.
2. There is emerging evidence that brand metrics in response to online campaigns are correlated
with offline sales impact.
3. Online ads can succeed in driving brand impact, though success is not guaranteed and
advertisers must embrace new online branding metrics to separate themselves from the
competition.
Advertisers are lives – they access online at work (nearly
27 hours per user per month), on mobile
But what’s interesting is this growth is not
only from e-commerce advertisers looking
increasingly building (43 percent of US adults now own smart- to generate web traffic or drive sales.
phones), and even concurrently with other The Cambridge Group report also shows
brands online media (20% of U.S. adults watch TV while that in 2011 54 percent of those surveyed
There’s an old adage that advertisers using either a PC or mobile device on a believe online ads are highly effective at
follow consumers’ eyeballs, and over daily basis, according to the Media Behav- “enhancing brand/product image,” com-
the course of the last 10 years, there has ior Institute USA TouchPoints study.) pared to just 38 percent of respondents in
certainly been a remarkable rise in the a 2008 version of the study. As consum-
Additionally, more and more advertising
number of consumers online and the ers have integrated the Internet into their
dollars are finding their way online. In the
amount of time they’re spending there. lives, advertisers are increasingly inter-
2011 Advertising Outlook published by
ested in ways to better reach consumers,
Since 2003, the number of Americans The Cambridge Group (a Nielsen com-
deliver messages, and build ongoing
with Internet access has grown 34 percent pany), a survey of over 300 advertising
relationships through this medium. In
from 186.7 million to 249.3 million, ac- decision-makers from a variety of indus-
other words, these advertisers are looking
cording to Nielsen. This growth has not tries indicates that digital budgets have
to truly build their brands online.
come in a vacuum – online has increas- increased more than any other type of
ingly become integrated into consumers’ media in 2011.

2. With more and more advertisers look- measure how well online campaigns
ing to include online brand building in
their media mix, they are looking for two
perform against brand marketers’ goals. Standard Brand
things: confidence that their online in-
Many brand marketers run online
campaigns with the objective to drive
Effect questions:
vestments are helping them achieve their
brand goals, and metrics that give them
in-store rather than online conversions. • Ad Recall: “Do you recall seeing
the ability to demonstrate success across
Nielsen is able to measure whether online an ad online for product X in the
their campaigns.
ad campaigns influence offline purchase last 7 days?”
behavior through Nielsen Sales Effect,
which connects online exposure to off-
• Brand Awareness: “Have you
line sales using the Nielsen Homescan
heard of brand X?”
Is CTR a good measure consumer purchase panel. • Message Association: “Which
brand do you most associate
of brand impact? It’s clear from those findings that online
advertising can have a substantial impact
with the message X?”
Online’s early history as a direct-response on offline purchase behavior. However, • Purchase Consideration: “Will
sales channel gave way to traditional as shown in Figure 1, CTR itself does not you purchase brand X in the next
metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), predict changes in in-store sales due to month?”
impressions and conversions, which the ad campaign. Picking the campaigns
e-commerce marketers used to develop with the best CTR would not deliver the
• Brand Favorability: “What is
strategies for optimizing online sales. best overall uplift in sales. Moreover,
your opinion of brand X?”
However, the broadening of advertisers’ evaluating a campaign solely on the
objectives to include brand building has number of clicks greatly underestimates
led to questions about whether these the number of potential consumers
metrics can be used to accurately influenced by the campaign.
Figure 1: Correlation of Sales Lift and Click-Through Rate
Sales Lift
Click-Through Rate
The random scatter of the points indicates a lack of relationship between sales lift and click-through rate.
Source: Nielsen
2 Copyright © 2011 The Nielsen Company.

3. Other brand campaigns are designed to noticeable ads increasing both the likeli- While based on a small number of cases,
impart information upon consumers, hood of recall and the likelihood of a click. looking at campaigns measured by both
make them more aware of a new product But there is no measure of branding – Nielsen Online Brand Effect and Nielsen
or service, or change feelings or inten- whether the message resonated with con- Sales Effect, there was strong alignment
tions about a brand or product. Using the sumers or if it was successful in changing between increased purchase consider-
Nielsen Online Brand Effect methodology, consumer awareness, opinions or intent ation following an online campaign and a
(See Page 5) Nielsen examined how well – that has any relationship to CTR. boost in offline product sales. Campaigns
exposure to online ad campaigns influ- in which consumers reported increased
ences these brand objectives. purchase intent after viewing an ad also
showed a boost in product sales. Cases
Interestingly, research shows that click-
through rate for a given ad campaign also But are brand metrics with flat purchase intent showed no
significant change in sales.
fails to predict the rate of success in ac- correlated with sales? Overall, it is clear that traditional direct
complishing these attitudinal objectives.
(See Figure 2.) Digging further into Nielsen research, response metrics such as click-through
there is evidence that attitudinal rate fail to indicate whether online cam-
As expected, there is a small positive re- measures, such as Purchase Intent, paigns will impact consumer attitudes or
lationship between consumers clicking on are important predictors of offline offline sales. As a result, advertisers need
an ad and their ability to remember that sales and thus, are a powerful way for better brand metrics that can serve as
ad (Ad Recall). However, the connection advertisersto gauge the success of their an indication of the sales impact of their
is still weak and likely due to more brand campaigns online. online ads.
Figure 2: Correlations with Click-Through Rate
Ad Recall Delta
Brand Awareness Delta
Message Association Delta
Purchase Consideration Delta
Brand Favorability Delta
-1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0
No strong correlations emerge between CTR and any of the Brand Effect metrics.
Source: Nielsen
Copyright © 2011 The Nielsen Company. 3

4. How do online ads Despite some claims that “no one pays
attention to online ads,” Nielsen research
Nielsen research also shows that online
ads often increase overall awareness for
impact consumer shows that the average increase between the advertised brand. This is an especially
the control and exposed groups is highest important factor in driving new product
attitudes? for Ad Recall, an indication that consum- success – clearly, consumers must become
One of the key questions weighing on ers do remember exposure to an online ad aware of a new product before they can
advertisers’ minds is, “Are my online brand campaign. It should come as no surprise buy it.
ads working?” To answer this question, that the first step to influencing consum-
The “lower funnel metrics” – Brand Favor-
Nielsen analyzed results from over 500 ers through advertising is ensuring that
ability and Purchase Intent —are far more
online ad campaigns measured by Nielsen they notice and remember the ad itself.
difficult to influence than Awareness,
Online Brand Effect over the last year and The next question brand advertisers want Recall and Association, given that these
a half. to answer is whether online ad campaigns metrics require a change in consumer
In short, the answer is yes. Brand ads do can actually change the opinions and opinion or behavior.
on average succeed in moving the needle intentions of consumers. Following Ad
for most measured Brand Effect metrics, Recall, Message Association showed the
as shown in Figure 3. next highest average change, indicating
that online ads can also succeed in con-
veying a brand’s intended message.
Figure 3: Average Online Brand Effect Results
6%
4%
3%
1%
-1%
Brand Message Purchase Brand
Ad Recall Awareness Association Consideration Favorability
Well-executed online advertising can drive branding metrics.
Source: Nielsen
4

5. Varying results across More generally, stronger performing
web ads drive noticeably greater posi-
Using brand metrics to
campaigns tive impact on all five branding metrics separate from the pack
compared to average or weak ads. Just
While our analysis indicates mostly posi- as TV ads perform better based on the Just as TV ad effectiveness research has
tive results across the different Brand Ef- quality of the creative and programming taught advertisers which levers to pull
fect metrics on average, perhaps an even context, online ads are similarly impacted in optimizing their TV campaigns, over
more important conclusion is that there by factors such as creative, publisher time, online ad effectiveness research can
is a lot of variance in the performance content and type of ad unit. In fact, online be similarly leveraged to help marketers
of online ad campaigns we’ve measured, advertising potentially offers a greater understand those factors that drive the
as shown in Figure 4. We find some range of possibilities than TV in terms of most successful web campaigns.
campaigns are very successful across all format (display vs. video), dimension/size, Those who embrace these new metrics
metrics, some campaigns succeed only on or publisher. In many cases, understanding and collect trustworthy data on ef-
certain dimensions, and others underper- online ad impact and what makes a strong fectiveness across media platforms will
form across the board. vs. weak ad is even more complex than be substantially better positioned than
understanding TV ad impact. others, and likely to separate themselves
from the competition.
Figure 4: Average Online Brand Effect Results
15%
10%
5%
0%
-5%
-10% Ad Recall Brand Awareness Message Association Purchase Consideration Brand Favorability
Weak Ads Average Ads Strong Ads
Average Nielsen Online Brand Effect results for strong, average, and weak performing ads. Results are
calculated as the average percentage point difference between the exposed vs. control groups on each metric.
Source: Nielsen
Copyright © 2011 The Nielsen Company. All rights reserved. Nielsen and the Nielsen logo are
trademarks or registered trademarks of CZT/ACN Trademarks, L.L.C. Other product and service
names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. 9/2011 . 5

6. Nielsen Online Brand Effect Methodology
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Source: Nielsen
How Nielsen Online Facebook’s large and highly engaged
user base enables samples to be built
About This White Paper
Brand Effect Works rapidly, meaning shorter turnaround time The data and insights in this white paper
are compiled from a range of Nielsen
for results. Because polling occurs after
Nielsen Online Brand Effect measures on- exposure and within the normal Facebook resources. For more information,
line advertising effectiveness using simple, user experience, no interruptive pop-up or contact your Nielsen representative.
strategic standardized poll questions that click-away surveys are required. Finally,
are an integrated part of the Facebook reduced sample bias through shorter, stra- About Nielsen
experience. (Note: Nielsen reports data tegic polls, truer measurement of impact Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is
only in aggregate to clients and receives through 24-hour latency, and validated a global information and measurement
no personally identifiable information demos of Facebook’s expansive user base company with leading market positions
from Facebook). ensure a more accurate read of online ad in marketing and consumer information,
Brand Effect questions are asked both of effectiveness. television and other media measurement,
a sample of respondents exposed to the online intelligence, mobile measurement,
Studies are compared against a normative
ad being measured, as well as a control trade shows and related properties.
Nielsen database to determine overall
sample that is demographically matched Nielsen has a presence in approximately
effectiveness and awareness results.
to the exposed group but did not see the 100 countries, with headquarters in New
ad. The difference in exposed vs. control York, USA and Diemen, the Netherlands.
scores is reported for each measure. For more information, please visit
www.nielsen.com.
6 Copyright © 2011 The Nielsen Company.