The Cross Media Optimisation Study - based on advertising campaigns from Kimberly-Clark's Kleenex Soft Pack tissues, Colgate-Palmolive's Colgate Total toothpaste and McDonald's Grilled Chicken Flatbread launch - aims to provide insights on the optimal mix of interactive, TV, radio and print advertising for a campaign. The study showed that the six- to eight-week Colgate and Kleenex campaigns, which used TV, print and online, achieved optimal results when online advertising was 10 to 15 per cent of the media mix. It added that raising the online allocation increased ROI.
Speaking at an MSN conference in Singapore, Rex Briggs, principal at Marketing Evolution, said: "The web works for direct response, which we are moving away from, but it can also build brands and can reinforce the brand message. The key is coverage and getting to the broadest number of people. Secondly, it's effectiveness and isolating and quantifying the message changes in the minds (of consumers). Lastly, cost efficiency."
The Colgate campaign results showed that by dedicating 11 per cent of the overall budget to the online medium, the brand could generate an increase in purchase intent of 4.3 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent using only offline media.
The research also revealed that it cost 23 per cent more to encourage consumer purchase with TV alone over using it in combination with online.
US-based Markus Barnikel, head of international sales at Yahoo, said: "The idea is that if this was a campaign for a large TV company, for example, for the last 20 per cent of the spend, they have only a small lift in terms of reach. This is a smarter and easier way for advertisers to take decisions because we are not asking them to increase the budget, but shift it."
Barnikael took McDonald's launch of the Grilled Chicken Flatbread as an example. He said by increasing online advertising's reach by 60 per cent in a campaign using radio, print and TV, the fast food chain could boost product awareness by 8.3 per cent.
The lift he noted would translate into six million more consumers becoming aware of the product.
The brands involved in the study, including ING, Colgate, Universal, McDonald's and Dove, paid for the research.