"Comscore's Fulgoni: Rumor Of Display's Death Greatly Exagerated" was the recent headline that caught my attention because for months the advertising channel has come under fire by naysayers and "industry experts" who have said display's golden age has come and gone. That's not the message Fulgoni shared....
"During the opening keynote at the Search Insider Summit here, comScore Chairman and Co-Founder Gian Fulgoni told members of the search marketing world's elite that the economic downturn - and its negative impact on the digital advertising marketplace - "appears to have bottomed out." He also revealed data contradicting the conventional believe that online display advertising has been eroding.
"If you look at the growth rate for online display advertising just doesn't look good," Fulgoni noted, citing the recent Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers' Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the fourth quarter of 2008. But that top line finding is misleading, Fulgoni added, citing a comScore analysis of the IAB data, which shows that ad spending on traditional, static online display ads such as banners actually is growing, not waning during the downturn.
After "peeling back the onion," Fulgoni said comScore's team found that the real hit in the so-called "display" business has been for "rich media" formats, which declined 19% during the fourth quarter.
"The banner actually increased in the fourth quarter," Fulgoni said, citing an 8% rise in the online industry's standard static advertising unit.
Fulgoni speculated that the main reason for rich media's decline is that marketers are opting for "cheaper media," and traditional banner ads are just a bigger bang for the buck."
I think he is right on the money and the research backs him up. The challenge is to time the offer right, have great production and copy elements, and get to the right audience with display advertising.