We've all heard the decades-old myth that the average consumer is bombarded with up to 5,000 ads a day. But if someone wanted to, he or she could get that number closer to zero. Just search for "how to block ads" and you'll find more than 700 million answers.
Ad-avoidance is a growing issue for marketers and advertisers; recent data from Adobe made a stir due to their finding that 198 million people are blocking ads. Since ad blocking is mostly a desktop browsing phenomenon, there's a lot of room for it to become commonplace across all devices. For example, Apple's upcoming iOS9 will include support for ad-blocking extensions in Safari, so we may see a lot of people adopting ad blockers as part of their mobile browsing experience too.
Additionally, a recent survey by Fractl and Moz found that 58% of respondents were using some form of ad-blocking software.
With the growing resistance to interruptive marketing, it's clear that consumers are fed up with low-value, high noise marketing. But are some of these tactics and channels still an effective ingredient within a holistic marketing approach? Better yet, is inbound marketing any better in the eyes of the consumer?
Fractl and Moz have once again teamed up for exclusive research, examining various marketing tactics' efficacy and efficiency.
The first part of our research focuses on marketing efficacy. For this, we'll share consumer survey results regarding different traditional and digital marketing and advertising channels' ability to gain awareness, drive action, and influence purchasing decisions. For the second part, we'll look at the efficiency of these same media by breaking down what a $10,000 spend can achieve across several different channels.
I. Efficacy: What Gets Results?
Survey Methodology
For this study, we went straight to the source: the consumer. In July 2015, we conducted an online survey of more than 1,000 people. Participants were asked 13 questions regarding their opinions on and recent engagement with various marketing and advertising media as well as tactics, including traditional advertising (TV, radio, print, billboards), direct mail, social media, content marketing, online search, display ads, ad retargeting, email marketing, paid search ads, mobile app ads, and sponsored story links.
A few considerations:
- Within the survey questions, "traditional advertising" was defined as TV, radio, billboards, and print ads.
- We provided participants with visual examples of terms they may not have been familiar with, such as pay-per-click ads in the SERPs, retargeting, and sponsored story links.
- Participants skewed young; the majority were between 18 and 34 (73.2%).
- A majority of respondents were male (58.4%).
Survey Overview
Before we dive into the full survey results, here’s a glimpse into our findings:
- Most likely to have a positive influence on buying decisions: Customer reviews, search, online articles, traditional advertising, and direct mail
- Most likely to have a negative influence on buying decisions: Mobile app ads, display ads, paid search, and email marketing
- Most effective for attracting business: Direct mail, content marketing, and appearing in search results
- Popular methods for self-education: Search, visiting a company’s website, and customer reviews
- Most-noticed digital ads: Display ads, media ads, and mobile app ads
- Best outbound channels for grabbing attention: Traditional advertising, email marketing, and social ads
The resulting findings are not an all-encompassing, all-knowing guide to which types of marketing people want. Rather, these insights may give you a new perspective on approaches you may not have considered before or may have believed to have dubious efficacy. For example, you may be just as surprised as we were to see how effective consumers find direct mail. Furthermore, these findings may simply reinforce the efficacy of your current marketing mix or what you already know about consumer behavior, especially the section about online discovery preferences.
1. Awareness of online advertising is high, but more than half of respondents are not engaging with these ads and/or actively preventing them from showing up.
The majority of survey respondents are aware of and notice the various online ad formats. Around three-quarters noticed display ads within 30 days of being surveyed. The majority had noticed all of the ad formats we asked about.
More than half (53.8%) reported they had not clicked on any ads within a week of being surveyed.
- Nearly a quarter (24.4%) clicked on a social media ad in the last week, the highest of any online ad.
- Somewhat surprisingly, sponsored story links were the second-most clicked, at almost 18%.
- More than 16% clicked on a display ad, which seems high considering a majority of respondents are using ad blockers (57.5%).
- Under 10% of respondents clicked on PPC ads.
2. Out of outbound and paid channels, traditional advertising, email marketing, and social media ads are most effective at grabbing attention.
More than half of our respondents rate traditional advertising high for grabbing their attention. There is arguably no better way to reach a mass audience than through traditional advertising. Plus, studies show it remains effective for not only awareness but driving other KPIs. A study by Nielsen found that radio commercials are effective at driving brick-and-mortar traffic, with advertisers gaining an average $6 return for every $1 spent. And a recent MarketShare study rated TV as the most effective ad medium, citing "TV is a major driver of indirect outcomes such as inbound calls, organic search query volumes, and website visits."
With a direct line to consumers' virtual centers of attention – their inboxes – promotional emails were next best for grabbing users' attention, at 41.3%. Social media ads were the third-most attention-grabbing, catching the eye of 35.8% of respondents.
Which ad formats aren't particularly attention-grabbing?
- PPC ads were found attention-grabbing by just under 10% of respondents.
- 16.5% found that mobile app ads grabbed their attention.
- Sponsored story ads were attention-grabbing for about 18%.
3. More than 88% use online search to seek out more information about a company, and greater than 93% had done so within a week's time.
Online queries are a ubiquitous part of daily life, so it's not surprising that 88.3% of respondents use online search to research a product or company. Just over 85% visit a company's website and 81.9% read customer reviews to learn more.
Other self-education methods are significantly less popular than using search, visiting a company's website, and reading reviews. More than a quarter (27.4%) follow a company's social media accounts to learn more about it, and 10.7% learn about a company by downloading content from its website.
Asking respondents about their online behavior within the last week gave insight into how often they're seeking out information online – allowing companies to market to them – and consuming online content.
A whopping 93.2% – almost the entire survey sample – used online search to find information about a company or product within the last week. Also within a week's time:
- 89% read an online article.
- More than half (50.8%) downloaded content from a website and gave a company their email address (50.2%).
- Over a quarter (28.5%) followed a company on social media.
Notice almost just as many people downloaded content from a website as gave a company their email address, which may signal a relationship between handing over their email address in exchange for the content they downloaded.
4. Customer reviews, online search, and online articles have a positive effect on buying decisions for a majority of respondents.
About 85% are positively influenced by customer reviews. 45% are significantly more likely and 40% are slightly more likely to buy something they hear about via customer reviews.
More than three-quarters (77%) are positively influenced by online search. 25.7% are significantly more likely and 51.3% are slightly more likely to buy something they hear about via online search.
More than half (56.7%) are positively influenced by online articles. 9.3% are significantly more likely and 47.4% are slightly more likely to buy something they hear about via online articles.
Interestingly, email marketing was most likely to negatively impact buying decisions, with about 44% of respondents slightly less likely (22.9%) or significantly less likely (21.4%) to buy something they hear about via email marketing.
Feelings tend to be neutral toward a company's social media posts and press releases, which don't affect purchasing decisions for 42.8% and 48.6% of respondents respectively.
5. Compared to other outbound and paid tactics, traditional advertising has the most positive effect on buying decisions, followed by direct mail.
Traditional advertising has a positive effect on purchasing decisions for about two-fifths (42%) of respondents. 6.2% are significantly more likely and 35.8% are slightly more likely to buy something they hear about via traditional advertising.
Direct mail positively impacts buying decisions for just over 30 percent. 4.2% are significantly more likely and 27.7% are slightly more likely to buy something advertised via direct mail.
Still, it's worth noting traditional advertising and direct mail are significantly less impactful than hearing about a company or product through other sources such as customer reviews, online search, or online articles:
- Customer reviews are two times more likely to positively influence buying decisions than traditional advertising.
- Online articles' positive effect on buying decisions is 56% greater than direct mail.
- Hearing about a company through online search is 1.8 times more likely than traditional advertising to have a positive impact on purchasing decisions.
On the other end of the spectrum, some ads have a negative effect on a person's likelihood to buy something. Mobile app ads, display ads, and paid search ads are more likely to have a negative effect on buying decisions, compared to other methods:
- More than half (54.3%) say mobile app ads have a negative influence. 31.4% are significantly less likely and 22.9% are slightly less likely to buy something advertised via mobile app ads.
- Nearly half (48.1%) are less likely to buy something advertised in display ads. 25.7% are significantly less likely and 22.4% are slightly less likely to buy something advertised via display ads.
- Paid search has a negative effect on just under half (49.4%). 25.3% are significantly less likely and 24.1% are slightly less likely to buy something advertised via pay-per-click ads in search engine results.
6. Direct mail, online content, and search are the most effective ways to attract customers.
Direct mail and content marketing come out on top, with more than half of respondents rating these as smart ways to attract their business. Nearly half (48.3%) say showing up in search results when they have a want or need can help attract their business.
Additionally:
- Well over a third of respondents consider traditional advertising (37.6%) and email marketing (34.6%) effective ways to win them over.
- About a quarter of respondents rate social media posts (27.4%) and social ads (24.8%) as smart tactics for attracting their business.
- Only 6.6% of respondents consider mobile app ads an effective tactic for earning their business.
While our survey results tip in favor of inbound (search, content) and third-party endorsements (customer reviews), our respondents do find several outbound tactics effective, especially traditional advertising, for grabbing their attention and direct mail for attracting their business. But efficacy is only part of the marketing equation ...
II. Efficiency: What's the Best Value?
In addition to efficacy, the cost of getting results, or efficiency, should be given significant consideration for what to include in your marketing mix. Marketers are continuously tasked with doing more with less, so finding the most cost-effective methods for getting the greatest results is the holy grail for marketers.
Cost Comparison of Various Marketing Channels
Cost is typically touted as a large benefit of inbound marketing while being a barrier for choosing more costly outlets like TV and print media. To get a better sense of the efficiency of different channels, let's look at the potential costs of a campaign designed to generate awareness.
CPM (cost per mille) is commonly used across a variety of ad mediums to measure the cost of a thousand impressions.
CPM = (Cost of Ad x 1,000)/Audience Size
In the ad-buying world, this is used to measure the efficiency of an ad medium. Focusing on this CPM makes sense for campaigns that want to achieve high awareness by getting a message in front of a substantial audience.
Since so many variables impact the actual CPM rate you would pay for a given medium, the chart below should be used for informational purposes only. However, these figures do give an idea of the huge difference in the price you will pay to reach a certain audience size across various advertising and marketing channels.
Direct Mail Pricing
You'll notice direct mail is missing from the chart above. With a CPM of $583 for a letter-sized envelope direct mail piece, it didn't exactly fit nicely in our chart.
Paid Search Pricing
Although CPM is used in paid search, cost-per-click (CPC) is the more commonly used measurement, so we'll use that as our benchmark rather than CPM.
Paid search costs can vary greatly depending on vertical, keywords, and targeting. While some keywords may only cost a handful of change per click, extremely competitive keywords can cost more than $5 per click. The chart below shows average CPC pricing data across nearly 700,000 keywords for a variety of verticals during 2014.
Based on the figures above, the lowest CPC is $0.38 and the highest CPC is $4.41. This puts our median CPC at $2.40. The average CPC for this data set is $1.70.
A note on CPC vs. CPM: Both are typically offered as options for paid search, display, and social ads. The chosen pricing model depends on campaign goals and budgets. CPM is often chosen for awareness-based goals and CPC is better for performance-based goals like traffic or conversions.
What a $10,000 Budget Can Buy
Based on the above pricing, let's look at how far a $10,000 budget would get you.
Extremely High CPM: Direct Mail
With a CPM of $583, for $10,000 you could send a letter-sized direct mail piece to 17,152 households. According to the Direct Marketing Association, the median ROI for direct mail campaigns using a prospect list is 12–14%, so this type of return on investment may be worth the high upfront costs.
High CPM: Local Market Primetime TV
A primetime spot TV commercial has the highest median CPM, at $33.85. (Spot TV means your commercial only plays for a local market, not a national market.) With a $10,000 budget, you can reach almost 300,000 local market viewers at that CPM rate. That's actually not such a bad deal – but keep in mind, it's for a one-time, 30-second spot and this is just the price to air the ad. Other cost considerations include producing the commercial, which may include script writing, editing, voiceover or acting talent, etc.
Mid-CPM: Magazines
Magazines fall somewhere in the middle of the pack, with a median CPM of $14.00. With a $10,000 budget, you could afford an ad in a magazine with a circulation of about 715,000 readers. Pricing varies based on the size of the ad, color or black and white, page position, and position within the magazine. Also consider the cost of the ad creative, such as copywriting and design.
Low CPM: Facebook Ads
With a CPM of $1.54, Facebook advertising is the most budget-friendly of the bunch. At that rate, $10,000 can pay for almost 6.5 million impressions. This budget would allow you to reach a ton of Facebook users at once or target the same people with multiple ads over a long period of time. Keep in mind, Facebook ad CPMs and CPCs typically become more expensive the more granular your targeting becomes.
CPC: Paid Search
A $10,000 campaign with a CPC of $2.40 would guarantee at least 4,167 clicks. The same amount spent for a $1.70 CPC would yield 5,882 clicks. For some perspective on how many people would see the ad, assuming a 5% click-through rate, the ad with a $2.40 CPC would get about 83,330 impressions and the $1.70 CPC ad would get about 117,640 impressions.
The CPM of Content Marketing
Content marketing is a little trickier to cost out since there's no industry-wide standard unit of measurement for things like impressions and costs-per-click, which makes an apples-to-apples comparison between the cost of outbound, paid, and inbound difficult. However, we do have a recent, relevant example of the price of content marketing versus TV.
Content marketing can garner viewership similar to a sizable TV audience – but for a fraction of the price. We recently had a Fractl client campaign placed on BuzzFeed that achieved more than 3.2 million views within several days of publication.
According to the rates above, you would have to pay around $75,000 for a 30-second TV spot on a primetime network TV to reach a similarly-sized audience.
Add the additional viewership from syndications and social sharing, and the equivalent in terms of viewership is probably similar to what more than $200,000 would buy you for a TV commercial. Not to mention the SEO value derived from the content.
With a Fractl campaign of this scope averaging $10,000 for end-to-end strategy, production, and promotion, that makes the CPM roughly $3.13.
While a $10,000 Facebook ad spend can garner the most impressions, the same budget going toward a large-scale content marketing campaign can include benefits beyond exposure to a huge audience, such as increased rankings, syndication, and long-term visibility.
Key Takeaways
Choosing the right marketing mix depends not only on how well a given channel and tactic are for the KPIs you want to achieve, but also your available budget. Striking a balance between efficacy and efficiency is crucial for a long-term, sustainable marketing strategy.
In summary, below are some of the main takeaways from our findings:
Awareness:
- Traditional advertising Loudmouths digital advertising when it comes to grabbing attention. Email marketing and social media ads came in second and third, respectively, for grabbing viewers' attention.
- The majority of respondents used search engines and or read online content within a week of being surveyed, making these effective avenues for getting in front of your target audience.
- To learn more about a company, a majority of survey participants turn to search, the company's website, or customer reviews.
- Display ads were the most-noticed digital ads, but had low engagement.
Conversions:
- More than half had downloaded content or given a company their email address within a week of being surveyed, which may be due to opting-in for content offers in exchange for their email.
- Customer reviews, search, and online articles have the most positive effect on buying decisions.
- Of the outbound channels, traditional advertising and direct mail were most likely to have a positive effect on buying decisions.
- Respondents rated direct mail as the most effective way to attract their business.
- Survey participants also said offering them free content or appearing in search results are some of the best ways to win their business.
Cost:
- Based on our cost analysis, content marketing and Facebook advertising are the most cost-friendly ways to reach a wide audience.
Want to see more data from our consumer survey? We've also filtered out the Millennial segment within the survey responses (18- to 34-year-olds) to extract additional insights. For our findings on how Millennials feel about various marketing tactics, be sure to download our free white paper.
Oh if only we could get this data for B2B!
I predict - email marketing and display advertising would fare better, but direct mail would take a knocking!
Fully agree - and add into the mix tactics like roadshows, showrooms and events.
Hi Heather & Roland,
Check out CMI's B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks & Trends Report: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/up... Pretty interesting insights from B2B marketers, who rated in-person events as the most effective tactic in their mix.
Thanks for the valuable link, I will have a look at this PDF.
I'm a little late to the thread, but I just wanted to point out that the inbound versus outbound issue is not an either/or issue. Both have always been needed and will always be needed.
Inbound marketing won't attract people into your funnel if they don't know you exist in the first place. Outbound marketing builds brand awareness and creates demand. Inbound marketing then fulfills existing demand.
Not every business is the same, and there's rarely a one-size-fits-all solution. My company sells high-tech B2B log analysis software to system administrators, developers, and DevOps engineers -- it's a long sales cycle. But we've found so far that content marketing (inbound) and trade show sponsorships (outbound) are the best ways to get people into the funnel (for us, at least).
Now, take a local restaurant or small business. I'd almost never recommend that they do content marketing. I'd almost always recommend that they focus on creative advertising and getting publicity.
Every business, industry, sector, and vertical is going to be different. (If a hammer is the only tool you have, then every problem will look like a nail. Inbound marketers and content strategists need to remember that "content" is not always the answer.)
This isn't a criticism of this survey or post, by the way -- just a suggestion that we all still keep the big picture in mind.
Hi Samuel,
Great thoughts, thanks for sharing! I completely agree it isn't an either-or choice -- for many businesses, a mix of inbound and outbound will prove most effective.
I do disagree with this statement: "Inbound marketing won't attract people into your funnel if they don't know you exist in the first place." Content marketing can do exactly that. :) We have done this repeatedly for our clients by getting them exposure on high-authority publications via content campaigns designed to increase awareness. This type of campaign can reach a massive audience, drive traffic back to the client's site, and garner a high volume of quality inbound links.
Kelsey, thanks for the reply.
I think a large part of the issue is that people never define what they mean by "content" and "content marketing" -- personally I think that they are vague, cliche words that don't mean anything.
We have done this repeatedly for our clients by getting them exposure on high-authority publications via content campaigns designed to increase awareness.
So, you're getting clients published in high-authority publications? That's not "content marketing" -- that's PR and publicity, which are two types of outbound marketing.
This isn't directed at you or your agency, it's just that this discussion leads me to something I've realized over the years. Marketing has the 4 Ps. One of the Ps is promotion. The promotional mix that marketers have always used has consisted of five elements:
- Direct marketing
- Advertising
- Personal selling
- Sales promotion
- PR & publicity
Almost everything that is called "content marketing" or "social media marketing" or "inbound marketing" or "off-page SEO" -- perhaps even "digital marketing" as a whole -- is really just doing one or more of those five things by another name. (Personally, I consider "digital marketing" to be just doing those five things via a new collection of communications channels called the Internet.)
I'm getting a little of topic, so I'll go into more depth at another time. Still, when a post talks about industry-level topics, it can be useful to take a step back and look at the big picture in terms of marcom theory.
I think you make a great point Samuel, that we need to distinguish between EARNED and PAID content marketing. Here's a relevant article about it: https://www.iconsive.com/inbound-marketing-blog/whats-the-difference-between-paid-owned-and-earned-media
I get the sense that you take issue with including syndicating or sponsoring posts on other websites as part of the inbound strategy. Promoting on your own social media channels is a way to earn marketing distribution, whereas you typically pay to have your sponsored articles syndicated.
I'd be curious how to other Content Marketers distinguish between things like social media advertising, sponsored or paid guest blog posts, etc. and whether the paid aspect of promotion should be included in our definition of inbound content marketing.
What are your thoughts?
I think conventional wisdom used to be that e-mail would replace direct mail as a preferred channel, both for marketers and consumers. And it certainly seems that many marketers have abandoned direct mail in favor of e-mail marketing. I've wondered if direct mail remains effective because so many marketers have moved to e-mail. As fewer marketers are sending direct mail, and consumers are opting out of traditional types of "regular" mail (such as online bill pay instead of getting a paper bill every month), the consumer's physical mailbox is becoming emptier-- and therefore its easier for direct mail to stand out. Meanwhile, more and more marketing messages are filling up e-mail inboxes (as well as the monthly statements for the above mentioned online bill pay!). Would love to see some research that explored this question.
It might just be me, but something doesn't quite feel right about the numbers here, let alone the results.
You mention the oddity that over 50% of users have ad-blockers, yet the efficacy of display advertising is extraordinarily high. It seems even stranger given my personal experience with this format - billions of ads across thousands of advertisers, i've never really valued it as either DR or for brand recall, without substantial investment in other channels (even then placebo testing nullified its perceived impact).
I also find it strange that paid search gets such a hard time, yet I have always found that (and email) to be one of the most effective channels, for DR and higher up the funnel.
Other odd results like 18-34 year olds (my generation) finding direct mail effecive. I personally frown upon the ecological impact of this format, and would think many of that age would also.
Could it be the sample size? Maybe a strange survey audience... it's certainly fishy!
I agree. Doesn't pass the smell test. Wd have prefered the study not have relied upon participant recall. Heck, I can't remember what I had for dinner last night much less my online search behavior.
Good study!
Actually more and more Internet users so brands looking to advertise there, to reach a wider audience. Companies invest heavily in digital marketing.
There are advertisements that are too intrusive, so many people use ad blockers.
The best ads are those that are integrated on the same site as to be navigating a page is very likely that we look at the ad and if we want to enter into it.
The online search is the most I use when I want a product I look in google and read to convince me to acquire feedback from customers who already have it.
Thanks for sharing your study.
we conducted an online survey of more than 1,000 people. What website was this survey on? Was the survey on multiple websites? Were the website(s) niche specific or general knowledge?
We use Survey Monkey to administer the survey, and Mechanical Turk to attract survey participants. Respondents were U.S.-based and over 18 years old.
The ad block number is probably skewed as a result of the tech savvy crowd on mTurk, but the research is great to have overall
Splendid job with the survey, Kelsey! I'm surprised (not very) that over 50% of the respondents would still like the direct mail. Looks like it's going to take a long time for search marketing to dominate the marketing landscape. The success of e-mail marketing, however invasive, proves that many people still like brands that inform them about the good stuff. The results of this survey tend to tell the marketers to split their advertising budget equally between traditional and modern promotional strategies.
Thank you, Susanta! The findings on direct mail are definitely surprising. :)
Really good stuff Kelsey, thanks for the data. Even I got frustrated from the unwanted ads and I blocked it too. If someone ask me about the marketing trend then my answer would be, the verbal marketing is the best as it can make you a brand. Then social media is the best, because of the current craze of social network.
Nowadays, people became more smart, so I think there is less chance to get clicked by email marketing specially, so I think it does not effective that much as it was before 3 years.
Anyway, keep sharing such an amazing data.
Thank you, Shubham! Glad you enjoyed it :)
Excellent contribution served me a lot in my learning of this Seo and all its external techniques that can help improve our work, thanks you still sharing your content
Great post. I also observe with our clients that traditional above the line advertising has a significant and positive effect on seo.
Kelsey, Nice job on the survey. But being naive I'd like to bring a few points to the dinner-table. How can you conclude these results from a sample of 1000 people? The Internet market is worth billions of users. Next coming to PPC results, if you say that people don't respond from such type of ads, then how Google is making so much of money from them and why they are still continuing them? If your results are to be believed, then Amazon, Apple will bombard the users post-boxes with direct mail services. Though I've read elsewhere that Email marketing is still worthy the "marketer's beating stick", I still have to see results on a personal front (being a small-time blogger). In another survey I found that online advertising is increasing exponentially and soon will dominate the traditional ads, how do you react to that statement? This is not to misplace your survey results, but US, UK and European users are lot of different from the Asian continent. So, to which region to these results apply?
This is a very good and informative read and it's obvious a lot of time went into compiling the results. I would be interested to see what the results would be like if the age of the survey participants was more balanced. When 73% of respondents are in the 18 to 34 year old age group don't you think the results are going to be skewed towards the buying behaviour of that age group?
Consumers are fickle. Blocking ads only serves to have content providers charge for access. I accept that someone needs to pay for the content, blogs, podcasts and videos I consume. If I don't want that person to be me, then I need to put up with the ads. There is an alternative to terrestrial TV and Radio, HBO and XM Radio; both charge subscriptions...
Be careful for what you wish for, you may just get it. Apple has ulterior motives with ad blocking via Safari IMO. They aren't doing this for their users, that's for sure...
Such a interesting findings come across, thank you for sharing.
If ad blocker is going to be in browser it will leads more high compensation in SEO world which is more lovable part.
Thanks for the great post. It is because every marketing expert would agree with me on this because there are certain features of inbound marketing which make it far better than outbound marketing.
It is important for every business person to know the difference between inbound marketing and outbound marketing or to be clearer why is inbound marketing better than outbound marketing.
In continuation with the above article i also enjoyed reading the similar article on "Is Inbound Marketing Really Better Than Outbound Marketing or It's Just a Myth?" by Sumit Ghosh from SocioBoard. He explains the major difference between both and how companies are using inbound marketing to grow their businesses online and many other facts.
Hi Roshan,
As a community manager here at Moz, I wanted to let you know that your comment is borderline self-promotional. Please know that we do keep an eye on incoming comments. Additionally, all our links in our comments are no-follow.
Thanks and see you around the Moz community,
It's interesting to read that traditional adverting still grabs so much attention from audience in websites. Even more than social media ads. Great article!
Kelsey,
Great to see numbers put to some of the things we hear talked about and/or occasionally read about. What jumps out at me, though, is how turned off people are by mobile ads. That, to my mind, deserves further study. If you have any additional information in that area, I'd love to see/hear it.
RS
Hi Ronell, definitely interesting to see the negative perceptions toward mobile ads. Perhaps it feels more intrusive to have ads served on a mobile device rather than a desktop. All of the data is shared in this post, so unfortunately I don't have any additional data surrounding mobile ads. Perhaps that can be a follow up study ;)
This is fantastic, thank you for the data!
It's very interesting that only 7-8% of users remembered clicking on a PPC ad. I wonder how much of that is their own perception, rather than the actual clickthrough figures? The majority of PPC providers include some indication the ad is sponsored, but I'm sure many users still don't notice.
Daniel, great point. It's important to remember these findings are based on consumers' perceptions, not what they may have actually done. So it's true that many will not even realize (or remember) they have clicked on any ad, especially those as discreet as PPC ads. I also believe this may be why direct mail/traditional advertising fared well in many categories.
There was data published from Google that shows huge discrepancy between how many people have reported that they scroll past the first page in SERPs, and how many have actually done that.
Ads being far more lucrative when it comes to perception, I won't be surprised to learn that numbers are very misleading. Great study though, for it still gives a very clear direction. Surprised to see reviews doing so great.
Late to the party, but I think the PPC results are fascinating. I appreciate your word choice of "discreet" - in my experience most people think they don't click on PPC ads, and most people click on PPC ads. The thing is, they tend not to look like advertising, which explains why fewer than 10% of your survey said a PPC ad grabbed their attention or that they clicked a PPC ad in the last week. The surprising part to me is that 60% said they saw PPC ads in the last week, and nearly 50% said they'd be less likely to buy after viewing one. I can't quite reconcile this with actual data, and I'm wondering what would inform that assessment across so many people.
More and more ads blockers are used. They can block even the Facebook and Youtube ads.
Is the beginning of the end of the ppc ads?
A great stuff for a Marketer. Undoubtedly your research and data is remarkable Kelsey. But as per my understanding, email marketing is not as much effective as your data saying. Social media ads specially the promotional ads are always good to get more attention.
Just wanted to add a point on the $10,000 campaign spend part of the study. The results show a certain number of paid ad impressions, but we need to remember that at least half of those impressions are probably never seen by human eyeballs.
Kelsey Nice article. Things i get from this article :
Customer review have more impact. If someone wants to promote their product or website then reviews may proven beneficial.
Its not always better idea to use ads for online promotion of products. Consumers usually hate blind ads. If i am gonna load my page with ads then it doesnt mean that i will get more clicks on ads. Consumers may ignore my website because of ads.
Anything else....
Fantastic article @Kelsey Libert. Ranked #5 on Google for "outbound marketing" by the way!
I'm curious about the Vital team's thoughts on the following quote from wikipedia:
"According to HubSpot, inbound marketing is especially effective for small businesses
that deal with high dollar values, long research cycles and
knowledge-based products. In these areas prospects are more likely to
get informed and hire someone who demonstrates expertise."
I run a web business that has low dollar value customers and often short research cycles (it's a tutoring marketplace). My conversion rates on blog posts are pretty low, reaffirming the quote above.
Any thoughts on how to tweak the inbound marketing approach for businesses like mine?
Thank you, Ali!
Chances are if people find you via organic search, they either have intent of signing up for tutoring or are in the consideration stage already.You don't need to spend as much time "warming up" your prospects for short buying cycles. Try being a little more aggressive with CTAs in your content. Of course, include testimonials from users throughout your site and within your content. You saw how powerful customer reviews are in this data :)
As always, a fantastic research. Just wondering, what will be the Google's next move to increase the popularity of PPC ads? I read that, even on SERPs people are likely to click on organic results more.
Great job!