Online Exposure Leads To Offline Sales

Written by Pablo Palatnik on August 8, 2007

As online marketers we take many things for granted, one…the obvious, every business should have a website. Even if you’re not an online business, weather you have a retail store or selling a service, it’s 2007, you have to be online!

Advertising exist for one reason, to convert those exposed to our ads or product into customers. Sure, analytics is great for tracking online conversions but how about those who don’t make a transaction online but call you or go to your store. Online traffic does in fact convert offline.

Yahoo & comScore, inc. released a study which, “examined the impact of search and display advertising on in-store sales for five major retailers, showed that consumers exposed to online advertising tend to research or ‘pre-shop’ online prior to purchase, and this behavior ultimately leads to increased in-store sales. These highly-engaged ‘pre-shoppers’ spend an average of 41 percent more in-store when compared to consumers not exposed to online advertising. “

“Key insights from the study also included the following:

-Consumers exposed to online advertising are more engaged: Consumers exposed to display and/or search advertising viewed an average of six more pages during the period in which they were researching compared to those not exposed to advertising.

-Almost 90 percent of the incremental sales generated by online advertising take place in-store:
Consumers exposed to online advertising spent an incremental six dollars in-store for every one dollar spent online.

-Integrated search and display campaigns have maximum impact:Combined search and display ad campaigns resulted in deeper engagement for consumers exposed to those ads, leading to increased sales. “