Earlier this month, digital marketing firm DoubleClick released the first paper to come from their Touchpoints IV consumer survey.  The survey, used to help identify how consumers make purchases both online and off, was conducted using over 6,000 U.S. internet users who had made purchases in the past year.

The summary paper highlights a number of key findings from the survey and includes detailed statistics, graphs, and survey results.  Some of the results were expected.  Others, however, might surprise more than a few internet marketers.

And the Oscar Goes to… Online Video

While the fact that online video was popular with survey respondents should come as no surprise, some of the additional findings of DoubleClick's study were.  When presented with a long list of available online media, a whopping 43% of those surveyed said they'd watched online video that very day.  In fact, online video tied cell phone text messaging for the top spot in the survey's "emerging media" category and was, obviously, the number one online activity of respondents.

When asked about video advertising, a quarter of respondents said they'd clicked play on video ads and another 43% said they watched movie trailers in online ads "all the time, frequently, or sometimes."  As reported here yesterday, its now up advertisers to determine how to take advantage of video's explosive growth online.

View-Through More Common Than Click-Through

Although the focus of many advertisers is the click-through statistic, more online consumers admit to "viewing-through" online advertisements than clicking on them.  According to the DoubleClick study, more consumers visit advertised websites by directly going to the website instead of clicking an advertisement.  As the study suggests, it would benefit online advertisers to tailor their advertisements to solicit more view-through traffic that click-through.

Online Advertisements Are Learning Tools

On a related note, DoubleClick's findings also suggest that online shoppers use advertisements on webpages more as research and learning tools than for initial product knowledge.  In-store products, television ads, and websites provided respondents with more initial product knowledge that online advertisements did.  But twice as many survey participants used online ads to gain further knowledge about a product they were already familiar with than those who were introduced to a product for the first time by the online ad.

This means online advertisers might benefit from more informational advertisements as opposed to those meant to introduce a product for the first time.  Combined with the view-through vs. click-through results, DoubleClick's findings run contrary to many long-held views on the nature of online ads.

Investment in Internet Marketing May Influence Impact

When asked about the influence of online advertisements in their purchasing decisions, survey respondents showed highly fluctuating results.  The basic premise of the study suggests that those industries investing the most money into online advertisements (namely travel, finance, and communications) saw the most influence exerted on their customers.  Some industries, like household goods and many service industries, saw much lower influence ratings.

But, as DoubleClick suggests, these results shouldn't be used to determine if online advertising is effective in a given market.  The industries spending more money on online advertising saw the most influence.  I agree with DoubleClick's theory:  more money means more web presence and more opportunity for consumers to see advertisements.

The Touchpoints IV survey should be a great tool for advertisers from every facet of the online community.  The results summarized here are only a small percentage of the information available in the report.

Watch this space for updates as DoubleClick makes more results from Touchpoints IV available.

[Download the report in PDF format]