Relationship Between Online Advertising and Brand Building

Advertisers increasingly think of online as a place to build their brands, but need greater confidence that their online investments are helping them achieve their brand goals. 

Some of the conclusions of a recent study are:

1. Click-through rate is not the right metric to measure brand impact. Virtually no relationship exists between clicks and brand metrics or offline sales.
2. There is emerging evidence that brand metrics in response to on line campaigns are correlated with offline sales impact.
3. Online ads can succeed in driving brand impact, though success is not guaranteed and advertisers must embrace new online branding metrics to separate themselves from the competition.

The Nielsen paper explores both the role of online ads in brand building, as well as the best metrics for measuring the success of Internet ads against marketers’ goals.