As part of a major acquisition campaign for one of our travel clients, Web Liquid undertook an in-depth analysis aimed at identifying the relationship between 1) search and display advertising and 2) tactics to increase the value of each conversion. While the campaign generated strong return on investment across display advertising and PPC search, we recognised the need to identify “optimisation insights” to drive increased revenue and efficiency.

Finding: Users exposed to three distinct display advertising messages throughout the campaign, produced average revenue 47% higher than the users who only converted through search.

Learning: Sequential serving of multiple messages across display campaigns combined with search will generate increased revenue.

Finding: 60% of users exposed to search only used brand terms before purchasing. 69% of users exposed to both search and display ads used brand search terms before purchasing.

Learning: Display advertising will prompt brand recall, driving increased demand for brand search terms across search engines.

Finding: A frequency of 10 ad exposures generated average revenue of £393, while users on less than three 3 ad exposures generated average revenue of £172.

Learning: Campaigns aimed at “meeting demand” should be frequency capped to 3 to 4 exposures, while campaigns aimed at “generating demand” should be assigned a higher exposure frequency. While low frequency (1 to 3) drives efficient conversion volume, increased frequency will drive incremental conversion quality by reinforcing the brand.