Branding: Maybe You CAN Do That on the Internet…

A little while back on the podcast I talked about the Internet as a channel for branding. More specifically, I talked about how advertising veteran Allen Rosenshine comment that the Internet doesn’t have the ability to deliver the “emotional capacity of branding”.I was doing some research recently and stumbled on a paper from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter entitled “Does Internet Advertising Work?”
From the paper:

…banners exceed or are as good as magazines, newspapers and television in generating brand recall and brand interest, in our view. However, to date we believe the Internet is only about half as good as TV and magazines at generating brand awareness…

…when branding is considered in terms of cost effectiveness, banners look even better, based on our research. We estimate that banners are 40–80% better than TV, magazines, and newspapers in brand recall and generating interest in a brand. As for generating brand awareness, we believe banners are about 40% better than TV, but remain about 20% worse than magazines…

One of the most interesting aspects of this paper to me is that it was released in February 2001!

I wonder if the effectiveness of Internet advertising have gone up, gone down or stayed about the same in the intervening years. On on the one hand, the saturation of ads online is much greater now than ever, and people have the ability to ignore noise. On the other hand, creative and technical execution has gone up as well, and with the advent of higher broadband penetration leading to more rich media ads, one would have to believe that Internet advertising today is more engaging.

What do you think? Is the Internet a more or a less effective brand advertising vehicle than it was 7 years ago?

Popularity: 5% [?]