Proving online marketing drives offline sales.

Stephen Kim, the director of advertising sales research for Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, has been involved with studies involving brands such as Kraft Jell-O, Nestle Coffee-mate and Ford F150 trucks. He shared the following at the latest AD:TECH show in Chicago in July:

"We have been creating experimental designs where we look at test and control groups of folks who were exposed to the online advertising of Jell-O, Coffee-mate and the Ford F150 and control groups who never saw those campaigns and we were looking at the sales between the two," said Kim.

The study ran for three months ending in January and there was a lift in sales in all three cases, according to Kim. The Jell-O brand saw a lift of approximately 7.5% in volume sales, Coffee-mate's sales increased 10%, and 6% of the overall sales of the new Ford F150 truck could be attributed to online ad exposures, he said.

"What exactly is it about these campaigns that made them so successful? It's not all about the medium. It's still about creative. It's still about smart execution and the strategy behind the campaign. [But] we can conclusively say now that there is an offline sales impact for online advertising," Kim said.

Excerpted from MediaPost, 7/13/04