Advertisers rely more on digital ads

Advertisers in the US continue to rely on a mix of media types, although print is clearly suffering, partly at the expense of Internet and digital advertising. These are some of the results of a new LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Poll of 1,015 advertisers from agencies or corporations who are involved in the advertising decision making process surveyed online between June 22 and 30, 2009 and 2,025 US adults surveyed online between June 24 and 26, 2009.

Internet Advertising
Among those who use Internet advertising, just 14 per cent say they only use it as a standalone digital campaign, while over half (54 per cent) say they use it in an integrated campaign with other media and 33 per cent use Internet advertising in both types of campaign equally.

More specifically, Internet advertising is used in a broad number of ways. Four in five advertisers who use Internet advertising use it as a branding device (79 per cent) and two-thirds use it to drive information gathering for an offline transaction (65 per cent). Slightly less than three in five advertisers (58 per cent) use Internet advertising to drive online transactions while 57 per cent say they use it to promote community around their brand, through such things as message boards, memberships and fan clubs.

Consumers find some ads frustrating
Consumers, however, find many characteristics of Internet advertising very frustrating. Four in five consumers (80 per cent) say they find ads that expand on the page and cover the content very frustrating while 79 per cent say ads where they can't find the close or skip button are very frustrating.

Three-quarters of consumers (76 per cent) find Internet ads that automatically pop up very frustrating while two-thirds (66 per cent) say ads that open if they are ''moused over'' are very frustrating. Three in five consumers find both animated ads that automatically start playing and ads that play music and/or have loud soundtracks to be very frustrating (60 per cent for both).