The Weather Channel's Web site, weather.com, on Monday announced results from
its recent research studies on ways to increase Internet ad effectiveness
through improved targeting.
Its first test campaign featured Las Vegas Tourism as the showcase advertiser.
Weather.com found that by running that client's ads within the Web
site's travel section as well as on the local forecast pages for the Las Vegas DMA, the so-called "contextual" campaign boosted click rates by 230 percent and
663 percent respectively, compared to run of schedule ads.
Weather.com's second study found that a campaign featuring five clients in
the health category also improved effectiveness by being placed within the Web
site's health section. That contextual campaign lifted click rates by 147
percent within the health section versus ROS.
In a third test, weather.com then created a special campaign targeting those
health accounts to consumers who no longer were in the Internet site's health
section. To do so, Weather.com remembered those previous users' ID on their
browsers. The click rate for these consumers was 87 percent higher than for
those clients' ads run within the health area and 116 percent higher than for
ROS ads.
"Ad targeting increases of this magnitude are
extraordinary," said weather.com chief revenue officer Paul Iaffaldano in a
prepared statement.
