Google’s search ads can boost brand awareness by an average 6.6 percentage points, according to a new study commissioned by the search giant.
The Ipsos Media CT study shows that search ads promote “top-of-mind-awareness”, a given brand or a specific product being first to enter the customers mind when asked questions about an industry; and claims that people who have seen a given search ad are more likely to recall the name of its brand.
Its results state that on average the responses of the test brand were 14.8 per cent in the test group compared with 8.2 per cent in the control.
Google partnered with Ipsos MediaCT for the research which involved 61 experiments to find out how search ads affected brand awareness in a person’s mind. For each experiment 800 US citizens “who met the advertiser’s specific target criteria” simulated a search for a keyword on their computer and, unknown to them, were shown either test page search results or a control search result.
In the test results, a test brand was featured at the top of the page, with all the other ads moved down one position. The control didn’t feature any ads from the test brand. The normal search results beneath the ads were not manipulated.
After searching, each person was asked a standardised question:
“Now please tell us what other brands of X [where X is a category keyword e.g. small cars] come to mind. If you cannot think of any brands, check the box labeled ‘Don’t know.'”
View findings in this infographic below:
http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/search-ads-drive-brand-awareness.html
