Troubled with an inability to track the effectiveness of his advertising dollars, John Wanamaker, the father of modern marketing, famously quipped: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
The lack of hard metrics available to measure the success of traditional advertising has since been dubbed the Wanamaker problem, and has eluded marketers for years. While it was understood then as it is understood now that advertising is a compulsory part of doing business, the value of a print ad, radio spot, or TV commercial is inherently difficult to determine. Beyond calculating reach, there is little marketers can do to measure the effect an advertisement has on their bottom line.
Luckily, the shift to Internet advertising and specifically, search engine marketing, has presented marketers with new opportunities to deliver more transparent and fiscally-responsible ad campaigns. Pay-per-click advertising revolutionized the industry allowing marketers to cut eliminated advertising spend by targeting people actively seeking their products and services, performance marketing let brands expand their reach while assuming none of the financial risk and paying only for results, and search engine optimization gave brands visible proof of their investment in the form of top placement in the search engines.
However, despite the considerable advances in tracking that have come with the advent of online marketing, elements of the Wanamaker problem still exist, especially when it comes to display.
The Facts About Display Advertising
Measuring the effectiveness of display is difficult, but Google Campaign insights makes it easier
At a recent conference, a Product Manager for Google Campaign Insights, a tool to measure the effectiveness of display ads, addressed the fact that 33% of display advertising has ‘no lift’. In other words, 33% of display advertising does nothing to boost brand awareness or drive sales. Moreover, just as in Wanamaker’s day, marketers are unable to determine which 1/3 of display ads are ineffective.
How Display Drives Paid Search
Despite a lack of metrics to measure the effectiveness of display, it has been shown that display ads drive Internet searches, and adding a paid search component to a display campaign can boost results.
Specifically, a recent study conducted by search engine marketing firm iProspect found that:
- 31% of people who see a display ad click on the ad itself
- 27% of people who see a display ad perform a related search
These two statistics tell us a lot about the relationship between display and search: not only does display drive online searching behavior, but the number of Internet users who click on a display ad is nearly equal to the number who performs a related search instead. While display generates brand awareness, and in some cases drives traffic, adding a paid search component to a display campaign helps a brand capitalize on generated demand and ensures momentum is not lost if the user decides to perform a search rather than click on the ad.
The Risk Of Running A Display Campaign Without Paid Search
While the benefits of integrating paid search and display are apparent, there are some marketers who may opt to run a display campaign alone. Assuming the campaign is compelling, running display without a search component will lead to demand creation and drive Internet searches. But what will happen once these searches are performed?
Without paid search to back up a display campaign, one may very well be creating demand for a competitor. If a PPC ad doesn’t show up in the sponsored listings when a user performs a display-driven search, competitor advertisements will.
While driving traffic to a competitor’s website is not something any brand sets out to do, running display without a paid search component may achieve just that!
The Big Picture
By now it should be clear paid search is a vital complement to any display campaign, but looking at the bigger and less immediate picture gives us even more reason to combine the two tactics.
The iProspect study mentioned above also found:
What does this tell us? The results of any marketing campaign are not always immediate and advertisements do not always lead to a direct action. Display advertising is no different. In turn, integrating paid search into a display campaign will help capitalize on actions taken by users exposed to your brand in the past.
In the end, adding a paid search component to a display campaign improves one’s chance of converting Internet users into customers and decreases the chance that spend on display (or any media, for that matter) will put money in the pockets of competitors.
We hope this article helps you understand how display advertising and paid search work together. If you have any comments or questions, or would like more information on search engine marketing, please contact sales@wpromote.com.

















front of potential partners and clients, I assure you all that I clean up good, and of course, please keep in mind that I was not the company’s first choice. I also had to promise not to wear my Cobra Kai costume or try to sweep anyone’s leg while working the booth, heartbreaking sacrifices indeed.
Moving on, it was a very busy and productive few days. Sometimes, it is a burden to be so popular and in-demand. The Wpromote booth is always a destination as our airplane bottles of Jack and Smirnoff generally are regarded as tops among the various tchotchkes. Inevitably, there are those who have attended one too many conferences and make one too many stops to pick up a bottle, but these individuals are well outnumbered by the many interesting and valuable companies attracted by our offerings. In attendance were a plethora of reputable ad agencies looking to expand their service offerings, new technology companies breaking ground in advertising models for the video and gaming mediums, and of course the big hitters who I find always have something interesting to say. Among the speakers, Dean Carnigan, the Director of Microsoft Advertising, and Jay Akkad, a Product Manager at YouTube, were some of the more interesting characters, but really, there were too many to mention them all here. ad:Tech remains one of the more reliable conferences for good content and a variety of good companies. I’m always somewhat taken aback by the number of affiliate marketers and ad networks in attendance (no, we don’t want to manage a campaign for Kitten Mittens, and no, we don’t want to buy traffic). All in all though, I anticipate some great relationships and new clients to come out of New York this year.
e dancing. However, just as the music moved me and the spirit soothed me, I realized it was time to call it a night, a very good decision in retrospect. Wednesday evening, the team attended a Heaven-and-Hell party hosted by Wpromote’s BFF, Epic Advertising, at the institution of New York nightlife, Marquee. I unfortunately consider myself in purgatory and could not attend, but anyway, somebody had to be on time to man the booth in the morning. Thursday evening, we had dinner at Samba 7 to celebrate yet another successful conference, and the meal was followed by an impressive photo shoot in Times Square and a final farewell to NYC. Friday saw us travel back to the paradise that is Los Angeles, but we departed only looking forward to next year’s conference all the more.
Today’s big news comes from the Google camp in the form of a $750 million deal to acquire AdMob, the mobile ad network that has seen impressive growth in just a 3-year period. While overall spend on mobile advertising is nominal in comparison to spend on regular search and display, the trend towards 














