NYC-based Eyeblaster, an integrated marketing solutions provider with over 100 media and creative agency clients in Canada, has just released its latest digital advertising tool, Channel Connect for Search, offering media planners a new way to understand online consumers – from how they got to an ad display to where they’re going.
As part of a growing ‘Advertising 2.0’ generation that looks at how advertisers and consumers converse, the new tool gives insight into user behaviour and helps justify investment in display advertising by reporting search path analysis to online display ads. Advertisers, agencies and brands get a clear picture of how one media channel affects another by taking into account all publishers in the user’s path – not just the last click.
‘Search is the user asking the question, display is the answer,’ explains Dean Donaldson, digital experience strategist at Eyeblaster, tells MiC. ‘Seeing the connection between the two is crucial to understanding consumer behaviour. The industry needs to be talking about holistic campaigns, as opposed to silo campaigns that only look at one media channel at a time. When you combine display with search, both channels benefit.’
Mindshare New York and LG Electronics are among those already using Channel Connect for Search to get an in-depth look at the consumer’s path to conversion across search, standard banners and rich media. ‘Using Channel Connect, Mindshare was able to pinpoint crucial campaigns data and draw important insights about the interaction of our search and display ads,’ says Harry Case, director of media analytics and technology at Mindshare. ‘In the end, it provided us with a more comprehensive overview of user behaviour.’
‘The media landscape is becoming more digital, so inevitably new rules for engagement will surface,’ says Donaldson. ‘The digital industry is going through a time of puberty. It sees so much potential of what it can be, but is lost within the overall media plan.’
While Channel Connect is planning to make its way into Canada, Eyeblaster currently delivers other ad campaign management systems for a number of Canadian media and creative agencies, including OMD Canada, Nurun Montreal and Bleublancrouge.
