Study shows video and HTML5 formats perform best for luxury brands
New York, NY – Sizmek (NASDAQ: SZMK), a leading global ad management company, today released its Luxury Brand Benchmark Report for the first half of 2014. The study, conducted by Sizmek Research, compared campaign performance data from 42 global luxury advertisers to benchmark averages from all verticals from January to July, 2014.
The Sizmek benchmark study outlined some of the most effective formats and their relative performance for luxury marketers:
- Polite banner interaction rates for the luxury vertical were twice that of the benchmark number worldwide. Dwell rates were in line with other rich media units.
- Polite banners with video clips showed higher interaction rates plus a 10% higher click-through rate (CTR) vs. all polite banners (both video and non).
- In-banner video units performed very well compared to the benchmark in interaction, dwell and click-through rates – suggesting that video strikes a chord with the affluent targets. Both interactions and dwell are proven indicators of increased brand awareness.
- HTML5 formats, both expandable and polite, performed better for luxury brands than the benchmark in terms of CTR. Expandable banners nearly doubled the benchmark in both interaction rates and CTR. When compared to Flash formats, CTRs were again almost double for expandable units.
“Affluents and aspirationals are first adopters and very mobile, sophisticated technology users,” says Alex White, VP Product at Sizmek. “Our benchmarks show that more innovative and interactive formats succeed in getting their attention.”
Luxury brands thrive on exclusivity, which has made them slower to adopt digital advertising and mass-reach online tactics for marketing. However, with the vast majority of luxury consumers online and online sales accounting for 5% of total luxury sales [1], these marketers are spending more on digital campaigns every year. The most successful brands are leveraging tools that provide sophisticated targeting and brand-protection capabilities, enabling them to carefully control the environment, format and style of their ads and maintain a vital sense of selectivity.
The full Sizmek H1 2014 Luxury Benchmarks provides data broken out by country, vertical and format and is available from marketingresearch@sizmek.com or for download at www.sizmek.com .
About Sizmek
Sizmek Inc. (NASDAQ: SZMK) fuels digital advertising campaigns for advertisers and agencies around the world with cutting-edge technology to engage audiences across any screen. For the last 15 years, the online business that is now Sizmek has proudly pioneered industry firsts in digital, including rich media, video and online targeted advertising across channels. Sizmek’s open ad management stack, Sizmek MDX, delivers the most creative and impactful multiscreen digital campaigns, across mobile, display, rich media, video and social, all powered by an unrivaled data platform. With New York City as a center of operations, Sizmek connects over 13,000 advertisers and over 5,000 agencies to audiences, serving more than 1.5 trillion impressions a year. Sizmek operates on the ground in 48 countries with a team of over 850 employees. For more information visit www.sizmek.com.
[1] 2013, Bain and Fondazione Altagamma
