Long-term benefits of using display and sponsored ads

When the studied brands invested in display, their sales increased not just in the weeks of activation, but also in the following weeks.

In the visual below, brands gained 100 (indexed) sales during the week of campaign activation. This is how much higher that sales are in the week of campaign activation compared to baseline sales (sales prediction when no campaign). In the next week, after the campaign was over, sales were still 70 higher than the pre-campaign baseline (indexed as 0), and they continued to be higher than baseline for several weeks afterwards.

This long-term effect was substantial: it amounts to 4x the short-term effect for display, and 2x the short-term effect for sponsored ads, which is consistent with advertisers’ perception of display as reaching audiences in the upper-funnel, providing sales benefits that last longer and inform consumer behaviors further down the funnel.

Synergy is significant for about half of the analyzed brands. Their sales benefits from using display and sponsored ads together go beyond the sum of the separate, individual effects of each ad product. The remaining brands still obtained the separate sales gains from each ad product, but didn’t obtain synergy effects.

The visual below shows how this works for a specific brand example. In weeks when both display and sponsored ads support were in the bottom half of all weeks, sales were on average 100 (indexed baseline). Average sales were 12% higher in weeks when display support was high in the top half, and 34% higher in weeks when sponsored ads support was high in the top half. However, in weeks when both are high in the top half, average sales were not 46% (12% + 34%), but 78% higher than baseline. Therefore, this brand got an extra of 32% (78% - 46%) while using display and sponsored ads together, beyond what it did by using them separately.

Digging deeper into which types of brands show synergy, we uncovered that it is most common among challenger brands. In fact, 4 out of 5 studied challenger brands show significant synergy. The likely explanation for this is that more shoppers are unaware of challenger brands (upper-funnel) initially, which means that lower-funnel actions are more likely to help motivate them to purchase.

In shoppers’ path to purchase, advertisers can use display to drive awareness and interest in a brand or product, and then help drive purchases with sponsored ads. Finally, the studied challenger brands also showed higher long-term sales effects for Sponsored Display.

The visual below shows the average sales effect for the studied leading brands (in blue), and the studied challenger brands (in orange), respectively. While the typical leading brand experienced most of its sales benefit in the week of the campaign (as in visual 1, above), the typical challenger brand experienced most of its sales benefit 1-2 weeks after the campaign.