New York, NY — April 27th, 2010 — A new report released today by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) found that advertising effectiveness scores on quality, original content sites as represented by OPA members, were numerically higher than on the Web, portals or ad networks. Based on independent Dynamic Logic MarketNorms® data, the findings show that ads on OPA sites consistently had significant effectiveness in 1) raising awareness, 2) creating message association, 3) generating brand favorability and 4) driving purchase intent over portals, ad networks and the industry.

To download the report, please click here.

The new report, “ Improving Ad Performance Online” is part of a series of OPA reports that leverage independent Dynamic Logic’s MarketNorms® data for measuring online advertising’s effectiveness and branding impact. The current report has additional analysis on ad effectiveness broken down by demographic, product category and the most popular ad unit sizes used on the Web.

“Ad effectiveness among OPA member sites’ continually outperforms other sites, including portals and ad networks,” said Pam Horan, president of the OPA. “Ad network performance has declined to a point where they provide no significant increase in purchase intent to advertisers. As a result of this insignificance, the average brand campaign may not achieve greater brand lift by advertising on an ad network. ”

KEY FINDINGS

The findings show that ads on these OPA member sites consistently had significant effectiveness in raising awareness, creating message association, generating brand favorability and driving purchase intent over portals, ad networks and the overall MarketNorms® average. In addition:

• Ad networks were shown to provide advertisers with the smallest change across ad effectiveness metrics
• The most popular ad sizes – medium rectangles, leaderboards and wide skyscrapers – perform significantly better on OPA sites than MarketNorms® on most metrics
• Video ad impact on content sites represented by OPA members was greater than the MarketNorms average, and had the greatest impact on purchase intent and awareness metrics
• Consumers are more involved with interactive ads on OPA sites evidenced by their significantly higher awareness, message association, brand favorability and purchase intent

ADDITIONAL FINDINGS

The current report offers additional analysis on ad effectiveness by demographics and product category including:

• 18-34 year olds are more responsive to ads on OPA sites
• Advertising effectiveness for categories such as CPG, entertainment and telecom was significantly higher on OPA sites than overall MarketNorms® especially for the more difficult to move metrics like brand favorability and purchase intent
• Telecom and travel advertising on portals led to statistically insignificant purchase intent while technology purchase intent on ad networks was also insignificant

Horan continued, “The fact remains that placement of your ad does matter, both in its effectiveness and impact with consumers. Well-lit, high quality content sites continue to offer advertisers the opportunity to raise awareness, create message association, drive purchase intent and generate brand favorability.”

About Dynamic Logic’s MarketNorms®:

Dynamic Logic’s MarketNorms® is a marketing effectiveness database of over 6,000 campaigns across more than a dozen industries collected from over 8.2 million surveys worldwide. The results cited have not been adjusted for exposure frequency, demographics, ad size, websites, advertiser industry and other factors that may contribute to brand impact. These findings are aggregate in nature, reflect past results and are not a guarantee of future results for individual campaigns. The data in this report referred to as overall MarketNorms® refers to the average performance of all online campaigns measured by Dynamic Logic in the last 3 years, including those on branded content sites, portals and ad networks. www.marketnorms.com

About the OPA

Founded in June 2001, the Online Publishers Association is an industry trade organization whose mission is to advance the interests of high-quality online publishers before the advertising community, the press, the government and the public. Members of OPA represent the standards in Internet publishing with respect to editorial quality and integrity, credibility and accountability. OPA’s membership has an unduplicated audience of 172.5 million unique visitors or 83% reach of the U.S. online population (comScore Media Metrix, January 2010). For more information, go to www.online-publishers.org.