A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

Media multiplier or 

halo effect

The role of one media 

channel on influencing 

sale or uplift in brand 

metrics. Commonly 

applied to online display 

advertising, where 

exposure to display ads 

may increase clickthrough 

rates when the consumer 

is later exposed to a 

brand through other 

media.

New Media Age (2005a) believes that the reason for this is not a mistrust of the very medium it’s using to take 

sales but, instead, the result of a growing realisation that its acquisition costs were swelling online. Showan 

says:

We were very keen advocates of affiliate marketing and  pay-  per-  click search. The trouble was we had to 

pay for every click and we were finding that the cost of acquiring each new customer was getting more 

and more. One big issue was that we were finding people would come to us through affiliates just to check 

information on a product they’d already bought, so we were basically paying for customers to find out how 

to hook up their new VCR. We still have affiliates – our main one is Kelkoo – and we still bid for clicks on 

Google, but not as much as we used to. One of the things we were finding with the search engines is that, 

with our own search optimisation and because so many people were coming to our site, we were normally 

very high up the list just through normal searching. In our experience, particularly with Google, if people 

can see what they want in the main list, they don’t look to the  right-  hand side of the page.

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Chapter 9  Customer relationship management

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Search for a general term relating to the advertisement (31%)

● 

Go straight to advertiser’s site (29%)

● 

Search for the advertiser’s name (26%)

● 

Click on banner to respond (26%)

● 

Visit a retail store (4%).

Of course, this methodology shows us reported behaviour rather than actual behaviour, but 

it is still significant that more than twice as many people are being driven to a search engine 

by banner advertising than by clicking directly on the banner! The research concludes that 

 paid-  search marketing needs to be optimised to work with banner advertising, by anticipat-

ing searches that are likely to be prompted by the banner and ensure a higher rank for search 

results. For example, a brand featuring a Cyprus holiday offer will generate generic search 

terms like ‘package holiday Cyprus’ rather than brand searches.

Abraham (2008) has also shown that online ads can stimulate offline sales. For one 

retailer with a turnover of $15 billion, their research showed that over a  three-  month period 

sales increased (compared to a control group) by 40% online and by 50% offline amongst 

people exposed to an online search marketing and display-ad campaign promoting the 

entire company. Because its baseline sales volumes are greater in physical stores than on the 

Internet, this retailer derived a great deal more revenue benefit offline than the percentages 

suggest.