Article 4 Effects of Internet Display Advertising in the Purchase Funnel

Question 1

What is being studied?

Answer 1

The effects of display banner ads on different stages of the company’s purchase funnel.

Question 2

Why is this important to study?

Answer 2

Because the effects of different targeting methods might vary based on consumers’ browsing behaviour.

Question 3

How and where is this research conducted?

Answer 3

Cookie-level data was gathered from a financial tool provider, using a field experiment.

AB testing was used to compare two versions of a web page against each other. Both groups saw different ads.

(control group: charity ads)
(treatment group: firm ads).

Question 4

What are the main findings?

Answer 4

• Display ads have the highest impact on ‘authenticated users’.
• Display ads do not influence ‘visitors’.
• Display ads serve different functions based on the type of customer.

Question 5

What are the limitations?

Answer 5

• It is a model-free experiment that does not control for potentially important observable factors.
• The research does not account for the number of impressions served to users.