New York, NY (August 2, 2010) – To help marketers make better decisions on investing advertising dollars, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today released the “Interactive Advertising and the Optimal Marketing Mix” study developed by MarketShare Partners, the leading cross-marketing optimization company. The ground-breaking study analyzed three brand scenarios in three different verticals—consumer packaged goods, financial services and automotive. Each example illustrates a distinct opportunity for optimizing marketing spend, specifically in the area of interactive media. Key findings include:

• Because of the reach and power of interactive advertising—as well as its synergies with offline media—in the three scenarios examined in this paper, the optimal allocation of interactive media spend should be between 1.6x and 2.2x the percentage of the budget originally allocated to interactive
• A relatively small reallocation of media spend can have a significant impact on marketers’ revenue. For example, one media optimization scenario examined in this study demonstrated a 6% increase in revenue—even after a 13% decrease in total marketing spend—when dollars were shifted to interactive.

“Optimizing marketing and media budget allocation is an increasingly difficult challenge for marketers as the media landscape evolves and the consumption of interactive media continues to grow,” said Joe Laszlo, Research Director, IAB. “Marketers who simply trust their instincts or follow the same media plan—campaign after campaign—risk missing opportunities to measurably improve their results. This paper clearly demonstrates the value of adding more science to the art of marketing.”
“In today's economic environment, CMOs want a better measure of the return on their marketing investment and that requires more accountability than ever before," said Iván Markman, Chief Operating and Financial Officer, MarketShare Partners. "Our analytics platform provides predictive insight into how to best incorporate interactive into the marketing mix. This paper demonstrates how marketers can best optimize their total marketing investment for superior results."

The study uses an application marketers themselves can leverage to make more informed marketing mix decisions.

To download “Interactive Advertising and the Optimal Marketing Mix” please go to http://www.iab.net/MarketingMix

About the IAB’s Research Council

The Research Council provides a forum for interactive research practitioners to share findings that support the growth of the industry; it encourages strong methodologies and best practices for research and measurement, and it works with the IAB to design and field important industry research projects and share these findings with key stakeholders.

http://www.iab.net/member_center/councils_committees_working_groups/councils/research_council