Display advertising may be one of the slowest growing formats in online advertising, but Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL are betting their bottom line that it can give search a run for its money. And now they have the numbers to prove it (sort of).
According to the Wall Street Journal companies like Microsoft and AOL, tired of taking a beating in search, have invested billions into new display-advertising technologies in the hopes of winning some of the dollars that are moving online from traditional media sources.
Microsoft in particular has been sponsoring research by the Atlas
Institute, the research arm of its ad-serving unit Atlas, to look into the state of display advertising.
The main conclusion of Atlas's month-long study of ad campaigns
(from 500 marketers appearing on 1,000 sites) is that consumers have often made their purchasing decisions before entering terms into a search engine. And while display advertising may not lead to a direct purchase with every click, it can play an important role in influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions overall.
That is, if users actually look at them. We're still waiting on the results of that research.
