Does online advertising drive offline sales? Is there a way to determine my digital media’s true return on investment, not just from ecommerce applications but through traditional distribution channels?

The short answer to these questions is that unless a retailer can track online website visitation to in-store sales, there is no way to directly relate their online advertising investment to overall sales. This type of tracking might be in the form of website user registration, in-store credit card history or loyalty club/reward programs that collect household or user specific information. Most retailers simply do not have an integrated panel linking online activity with overall sales consumption at an individual or household level.

The Power of Integration
Developing unified, integrated panels of online users and offline consumers are a major focus for researchers moving forward. This requires cooperation within the marketing research community. Specifically, research firms, each with their own consumer panel must partner together in order to produce a merged panel containing individuals or households included in both panels. Essentially, these merged panelists combine to form a third more powerful panel that incorporates insights from the merged data. So, for example, one panel may understand the households purchase history while another understands its online behavior. Obviously, this integration usually results in a much smaller unified panel but powerful insights can be generated from these integrated panels.

For example, a 2009 study completed last year by comScore/dunnhumbyUSA conducted using website panelists and a leading grocery loyalty card panel found that shoppers exposed to online advertising had a 9 percent sales increase in offline purchasers during a 3 month measurement period. This initial integrated panel research offers real promise for firmly establishing the true ROI of digital investment across the enterprise, not just within the digital space.

comScore, IRI Join Forces
In fact, on December 31, 2009, comScore and Information Resources Inc. (IRI) announced they were joining forces to build an integrated panel. Building an integrated panel is no easy task. Panelist are ever changing and integrating disparate data sets is always challenging. Not to mention, the intersection of even two large panels is still a small core group of panelist making an integrated study currently impossible for all but the largest brands. Still, the development of integrated panels provides opportunities for deep insights for both retailers and CPG firms to take their digital understanding to the next level.

Empower continues to closely monitor the development of integrated panels in support of our client’s digital ROI objectives.

:: By Kirby Thornton, Empower MediaMarketing Director of Consumer Insights

Even shopping is hectic… uploaded by jazzpic