Yahoo7 reveals the most effective ads for e-commerce

Internet Retailing

12th Sep 2016

The latest Insight Series report from Yahoo7, The RomCom of E-Comm, has revealed that native advertising is the strongest ad formula for e-commerce brands, when looking at the five stages of purchase.

The Yahoo7 Labs experiment compared several digital ad formats to find the most effective path to achieving a range of campaign objectives across the five stages of purchase: trigger, awareness, consideration, loyalty and advocacy. Native advertising (a combination of a website’s native display with sponsored content) proved to be the most effective strategy in four out of five key stages.

“Native has only been around for a few years and it has already completely re-written the advertising playbook. For Yahoo7, native represents an exciting opportunity. The format is accountable for one third of our revenue and we only see this opportunity growing in the future,” Yahoo7 commercial director Paul Sigaloff said.

The media company also investigated the role of other advertising mediums and found that TV and online are the only two mediums consistently over-performing through all stages when it comes to Aussie purchasing habits.

According to Sigaloff, the latest report provides brands and advertisers with a unique understanding of the most effective ad formats to achieve campaign objectives. “Our partners can use these insights to strategically select and leverage the best mediums to deliver a strong return on investment,” he said.

For instance, the report has identified who is most likely to convert to purchase, and who will get stuck browsing. In an average week, two in three consumers browse items online, of which 56 per cent convert to a purchase. That translates to a little more than one-third of overall consumers. The likelihood of transforming browsers into buyers also varies by product category.

The research consisted of an online survey of more than 1,000 respondents across Australia that have either browsed or shopped online in the last 12 months.