International Travel Brand
The Campaign
A well-known international travel brand ran
a month-long campaign in February 2011 to
encourage people to book tickets. A total of 16
million impressions were placed for the duration
of the campaign with 13.6 million running of site
on guardian.co.uk and 2.4 million on Guardian
Select, which is an editorially approved collection
of the very best independent publishers and
blogs from across the web. The campaign was
geo-targeted to London and the South-East.
The Research
A Brand Aid Digital Campaign test was used to
measure the campaign performance. The decision
was made to partner with Nielsen Online due to their
unique ability to track ad exposure on their NetView
panel – a panel which fuels the UKOM industry
planning currency for online. We appended Nielsen
tags to each creative execution that enabled Nielsen
to visualise who on their panel has seen the campaign.
They were subsequently able to use panellist
information to profile those exposed and track how
they behaved online following exposure.
The objectives for the research were:
To evaluate effectiveness of the campaign as a whole
To understand the key differences between the
effect of ad placement on guardian.co.uk and
Guardian Select
The effectiveness of the campaign was
measured against the following metrics:
Campaign delivery
Brand Awareness
Purchase Consideration
Brand Favourability
Brand Recommendation
Brand Image Attributes
Creative Evaluation
The Results
1. The campaign delivered a total reach of 790,000
people which represents 6.6% of the online population
in London/South-East.
2. Guardian Select delivered campaign reach highly
efficiently: although it only carried 15% of impressions,
it accounted for 28% of the target audience reach.
3. Reach continued to build steadily over the
duration of the campaign on both, guardian.co.uk
and Guardian Select platforms, meaning there were
no wasted impressions.
4. Only 6% of those exposed to the travel brand’s ads
on Guardian Select have also seen it on guardian.co.uk,
proving that advertisers can significantly extend the
reach of their campaign by adding Guardian Select
to the mix.
5. The campaign was successful in generating
significant uplifts in all brand metrics, including brand
favourability and purchase intent, while also driving
14,000 web site visits and a further 23,000 related
brand searches.
6. The campaign boosted the brand’s key image
attributes: 10 out of 10 among those exposed on
Guardian Select and 8 out of 10 among guardian.co.uk’s
audience.
7. Those exposed to the campaign thought that the ads
communicated a believable and relevant message that
contained new information about the advertiser.
8. 4 in 10 people were also willing to talk about the
campaign to their friends and relatives, which is 50%
above Nielsen’s norms for similar campaigns.
In summary, advertising on guardian.co.uk
and high quality influential sites, which comprise
Guardian Select helped the advertiser achieve:
Efficient campaign delivery
Increase in site visits
Uplift in brand metrics
Increase in purchase intent
Word of Mouth effect