Love this article on online advertising

Very insightful. I will definitely be reading your "Understanding the online buying cycle" blog.

If you liked this article; this might be of interest as well.

Atlas just released a great follow-up to their land mark study from 2007 on what they termed the “Last Click” phenomenom. This latest study is titled “Behind the Numbers: Making Last-Click Assumptions”.

In its research, Atlas has found that in the final two days prior to a purchase a consumer is usually exposed to 5.5 ads. But, those final 48 hours before a buy only account for less than one-third of total media impressions, Atlas determined. If advertisers back up the purchase funnel a bit, they’ll see consumers were exposed to 8.5 ads in the week before a purchase, 11 ads in the two weeks before a purchase and 14 ads in the month prior to a purchase.

This study, in my opinion, reinforces greatly the topics covered in the majority of my own personal posts on my blog– most notably my series on “understanding the buy cycle” where I’ve spoken about client conversions being the outcome of multiple influences over time (you can see part I of that series here: http://nurtureengine.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/understanding-the-buying-process-online/)

Here’s the OMMA write-up on the Atlas Study: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107034#

Here’s an old Clickz article that talks about the original “last click” study by Atlas back in 2007: http://www.clickz.com/3626112