Display’s ROI Problem

A recent study by Forrester and Adometry concluded that although online display spending has grown during the last few years, difficulties in measuring ROI and a general lack of understanding about display optimization were significant barriers to marketers devoting larger portions of their ad spending to online advertising. Other findings included;

• 62 percent of marketers surveyed stated that a lack of measurable results was primarily responsible for limiting their spend in display.
• 43 percent of respondents noted that a lack of understanding about who is seeing their ads stopped them from considering an increase their display budgets.
• 51 percent stated that the price of display advertising is too high, relative to ROI.
• 43 percent stated that a better understanding of what consumers did after viewing their ads would cause them to increase their spending on display.

This puts even more pressure on the looming fight in the Internet ad industry to define a better way of attributing success in campaigns. The way it stands, the lack of reliable, standard metrics leads many marketers back to a last-click or last-ad-seen standard that’s been show to over-credit bottom-of-the-funnel activities like search and under-credit awareness and persuasion vehicles like display and video.