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New OPA Europe - comScore study leaves CTRs behind

Paris, 28 September 2010 – The Online Publishers Association Europe today announced the results of research done in partnership with comScore. “The Silent Click” study looks at the impact on European users after their exposure to online brand advertising, including searches performed on the advertisers’ brands and visits to their websites. Exposure to online ads had a dramatic effect on these actions: 42% of those exposed to online brand ads went on to visit the advertiser’s website, compared to industry-average Click-Through Rates (CTRs) of less than 1%. Users exposed to online brand ads were also more engaged with the brand, spending significantly more time on the advertisers’ sites and viewing many more pages than those who did not see the ads.

The study concludes that online brand advertising does indeed make an impact over time, just as offline advertising does, and shows that CTRs are essentially a Direct Response metric, making them inappropriate for judging the long-term effectiveness of online brand advertising.

The study also shows that online ad effectiveness varies based on the type of site on which the ad runs. In most of the 6 European markets covered in the study (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey), online brand ads seen on OPA Europe member sites have greater impact than those seen on other publishing sites or on portals.

Current OPA Europe President Tomasz Józefacki of Agora commented: “Everyone agrees that Click-Through Rates have gotten really low, yet they keep using this metric to measure online ad campaigns, and then complain that online branding ads don’t work. Our research shows something very different: that there are other, more pertinent metrics which prove that online brand advertising does indeed drive search behaviour and visits to brand websites as well as engagement with the brand. And advertisers now know that placing an ad on a high-quality publishing site makes that ad even more effective.”

For study results covering the aggregate of the 6 countries, please visit

www.opa-europe.org/resources/research/264-the-silent-click-building-brands-online-in-europe

(Individual country data is available only to OPA Europe members.)

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OPA Europe Press Contact:

Ms. Amy Porter - ( +33 (0)1 3054 4659   - mobile + 33 (0)6 0959 8763   This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

About OPA Europe:
Founded in 2003 by some of the European Internet's leading content brands, OPA Europe represents the interests of first-rate online publishers before the advertising community, the press, governmental and European institutions and the public at large. OPA Europe seeks to establish and promote the Internet as an effective advertising medium for marketers and a sustainable media business for publishers, thereby ensuring the continued availability of quality content to serve the public good. Members of OPA Europe are: 24 Media (Greece), AdMeld (UK), Agora (Poland), Gruppo Espresso (Italy), International Herald Tribune/New York Times Media Group (Europe), Lambrakis Press (Greece), Le Monde Interactif (France), Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy), Le Temps (Switzerland), Prisacom/El País (Spain), RCS Mediagroup (Italy), Turkuvaz Media group (Turkey), Unidad Editorial/El Mundo (Spain) and Spiegel Online (Germany).

comScore Europe Press Contact:

Ms. Berit Block - ( +44 (0)203 111 1758   This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

About comScore:
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. comScore helps its clients better understand, leverage and profit from the rapidly evolving digital marketing landscape by providing solutions in the measurement and evaluation of online audiences, advertising effectiveness, social media, search, video, mobile, e-commerce , and a broad variety of other emerging forms of digital behavior. comScore's capabilities are based on a global panel of approximately 2 million Internet users who have given comScore explicit permission to confidentially capture their browsing and purchase behavior. These data can also be combined with census-level Web site or telecom carrier data to provide the most comprehensive and unified measurement of digital activity. comScore services are used by more than 1,300 clients around the world, including global leaders such as AOL, Baidu, BBC, Best Buy, Carat, Deutsche Bank, ESPN, Facebook, France Telecom, Financial Times, Fox, Microsoft, MediaCorp, Nestle, Starcom, Terra Networks, Universal McCann, Verizon Services Group, ViaMichelin and Yahoo!. For more information about comScore and their recent acquisition of Nedstat, a leading provider of web analytics, visit www.comscore.com.

OPA Europe members represent, collectively, more than:

• 23 million unique visits daily
• 27 million sessions daily
• 200 million page views daily