URLs in Advertising: Australia Versus the US

Marilyn Y. Jones, Ph.D. [HREF1], Assistant Professor of Marketing, Faculty of Business [HREF2], Bond University [HREF3], Gold Coast QLD, 4229. mjones@bond.edu.au

Joanna Gabler, Ph.D, 636 Columbia, Houston, TX 77007, USA, joanna_gabler@yahoo.com

Stephen J.S. Holden, Ph.D. [HREF4], Associate Professor of Marketing, Faculty of Business [HREF2], Bond University [HREF3], Gold Coast QLD, 4229, sholden@bond.edu.au

Abstract

This study analyses ads taken from eight popular magazines in Australia and eight popular magazines in the US to see the extent to which offline advertising makes mention of websites and/or advertises specific websites. Magazines from two years, 2000 and 2004, were compared to examine this issue over time as well across countries. As expected, results show marked increases in the mention of web activity in offline advertising, significant differences between Australia and the US, and substantial differences across product category for each country. The need to explore the actual offline advertising in concert with consumer awareness and usage is suggested.

Introduction

Marketers have a variety of media, including Internet, at their disposal to apply to a host of communication goals, including awareness, attitude and emotion. All the signals a company sends to its target market through various communication options contribute to the overall brand outcome (Duncan & Moriarty 1998). An issue is how, if at all, to integrate online with traditional mass media in order to achieve the objectives deemed relevant to a communications program. This is a need addressed by integrated marketing communications (IMC) approaches (Schultz 1997). Any marketer-initiated communication, including traditional advertising media, direct response (including computer based and online), place-based communication (e.g. billboards), point-of-purchase efforts (e.g. shelf talkers), promotions aimed at both trade and consumers, event marketing/sponsorship, publicity, and personal selling plays a role in IMC (Keller 2001). Increasingly, the marketing managers who select communication activities consider online an important addition to two key media, TV and print. DoubleClick’s Marketing Spending Index for Fall 2002 (HREF5), for instance, shows that marketers from a broad range of product categories place priority on online and email media spending second only to TV and print. The challenge for an IMC is how to achieve results by capitalizing on the strengths of each medium in concert with other media (Schultz 1997). The other challenge is figuring out how to capitalize on the special strengths of the Internet. One simple point of coordination is the prospect of using offline media such as TV and print to either direct traffic to a website or the prospect of using a cue such as a URL to communicate something about the brand.

There are strong market expectations about corporate presence online. Some 60% of online users, for example, expect to find both an online version (People Online) and an offline version (People magazine) of their favorite magazine (Barsh et al. 2001). The route to driving web traffic may vary depending on the product category. For a magazine, there are numerous opportunities to encourage offline readers to go online but, for food products, marketers may have to rely either on URLS in ads or on the package to accomplish this same result.

Research on multi-channel communication either comparatively or combined is limited. Only a few studies have attempted to understand the complementary effects of different media as they pertain to either eliciting the same communication results from the combination of media or as they aim to achieve a set of communication goals from a combination of media. For instance, one might use the TV medium to create a memorable ad around the desired brand message and cues from that ad can be used on packages that consumers see in the store in order to stimulate retrieval of the brand message (Keller 1987). Alternately, a delightful shopping experience online as a result of a quick loading website, instant purchase confirmation, easy navigation, and personalized greetings can be a key way to instill brand emotion but brand name awareness might be better addressed by the TV and print activities. The preponderance of laboratory research shows that screen media (compared to print and TV) perform poorly for recall measures of learning (Eveland & Dunwoody 2001, Furnham 2001). Yet, leading consumers to a website, requires using a medium such as print that can create memory for the URL.

Communication media have been used to produce a variety of responses (e.g. informing, persuading, reminding) and to transform the product from a collection of attributes into a product with personal meaning (including affect) for the consumer (Keller 2001). The earliest rationale for going online was to seek the brand associations that come with being online - being a state-of-the-art company (Rayport 1999). The value of having personal meanings and positive emotions attached to a brand has been evidenced by increased customer loyalty (Fournier 1998, Roehm, Pullins & Roehm 2002). It is often proposed that durable, positive emotional responses to a brand are due to personal experience with the brand (Cohen 1990, Schmitt 1999, Weinberg & Diehl 2001) and also to the sense of relationship between the consumer and the brand (Fournier 1998). Qualities of the Internet suggest that it is capable of influencing these brand associations because of its ability to offer online experiences and manifest relationships to the company and other customers (Jones & Vallaster 2004). There are many arguments for the value of the website but driving traffic to a website remains a perennial problem.

Stuart et al. (2003) report the results of an extensive industry study, the Cross Media Optimization Study (XMOS). Results across 10 separate brand studies showed clear evidence for incremental improvement adding a second medium (either TV or online) with the size of the improvement depending on which communication effect (e.g. awareness, association) was being observed. Naik and Raman (2003) also addressed synergy. They measured the relationship between budget allocations for media (TV and magazine) and sales, successfully demonstrating synergy between two media on sales outcomes but not investigating either any Internet related effects or the nature of the communication effects that would have intervened between the media spend and the sales results. At minimum, the effectiveness of using two media (one of which is the Internet) rests on the ability of the offline medium to drive traffic to the website where the intended brand communication objectives selected for the website may be met.

Emerging research supports the importance of including URLs in offline advertising. Consumers today expect firms to have websites and using URLs in print and other advertising may help to establish that important brand cue as well as provide the detail required to locate websites, where the communication objectives that are best met online can be served. This study attempts to learn how widespread the use of the offline advertising for a website is in magazine advertising and, thus, comment on the potential for strong cross media relationships.

Background

At a very early stage in the growth of the Internet, Maddox, Mehta and Daubek (1997) investigated the use of URLs across several advertising media and product categories. In particular, they were interested in whether or not ad viewers noticed URLs in ads and whether that varied depending on product category. They also asked for retrospective estimates of the extent to which seeing a URL influenced visit behavior and also about impact of the URL cue on the beliefs about the company. The vast majority of respondents (83%) claimed to notice URLs in ads with large proportion of respondents noticing URLS in advertising for products likely to be consumed by consumer literate users, computer products (73%) and telecommunications (65%). Financial and travel firms have enjoyed online success and URLs for these categories were reported to have been noticed by 48% and 42% of users, respectively. Television (60%) was the most commonly reported medium where respondents said they noticed a URL. Magazines were a distant second with just 20% of respondents saying they saw URLs there.

Edwards and La Ferle (2000) reported a study conducted in 1997 that directly examined what proportion of TV ads included a URL (nearly 21%) and how those ads containing URLS were distributed across product categories. Ads for automobiles represented 19.6% of the ads with URLs while medicines and movies constituted 10.7% and 8.9%, respectively. These are the only academic studies to date that have investigated the use of URLs in offline advertising. It has been seven years since the incidence and effects of offline URLs have been investigated. An update is warranted simply in view of the technical changes and online business changes that have transpired. In that period, firms have expanded their use of the web and this should be reflected in offline advertising by a higher incidence of URLs appearing in magazine advertising.

Demand for web resources is high. Some 62% of Australians maintain an Internet connection at home and 2/3 of this group can be said to be active users (Greenspan 2003). This is not far behind the US where 75% of households have Internet access (Greenspan 2004). It is expected that almost 55% of Australian web users will have purchased something from a web site by the end of 2004 (Greenspan 2003) while, among US users, 61% of users would have bought a product at the end of 2002 (Madden 2003). As a result, it is expected that companies will show a strong response to that web demand in the form of web presence and ad cues that drive potential users to the website.

However, it is often said that Australia lags behind the US in the rate at which businesses create web presence and develop ecommerce (e.g. Lindstorm & McSherry 1999). Some evidence for this belief comes from Howarth (2002) who argues that small and medium businesses lag behind larger ones because they lack economies of scale. An inspection of websites shows that an Australian company such as Bunnings Warehouse (home improvement) offers few of the website features that are offered by the US firm it emulates, Home Depot. Unlike the US counterpart Net Grocer, there is no Australian firm that attempts to offer even non-perishable groceries nationwide. Thus, while consumer acceptance and demand for the web is high in Australia, ecommerce development may be less than in the US and that may be signaled by using fewer URLs in offline advertising.

Research Questions

Q1: With the increase in Internet activity, do more magazine ads contain URLS than they did several years ago?

Q2: Are there differences between the US and Australia in the proportion of ads that contains URLs?

Q2a: Has the use of and relative use of URLs in ads in these two countries changed over time?

Q3: Does the overall current use of URLs in ads replicate awareness levels found in earlier studies?

Q3a: Does the distributions of URLs across product categories replicate the awareness distributions found in earlier studies?

Q4: Does Australia differ from the US in the product categories that include URLs in magazine ads?

Q4a: In what ways have the distributions of URLs changed over time in Australia and the US?

Method

Magazine Selection

The research questions were examined by coding the ads contained in a variety of magazines. As part of a larger multi-country advertising study, eight magazines were collected from each of the US and Australia. In each country, four general interest magazines were collected in the following categories: news and current events (e.g. The Bulletin, Time), business news (e.g. BRW, Business Week), gossip (e.g. Who, People) and sports (e.g. Inside Sport, Sports Illustrated). The remaining four magazines were drawn from magazines that explicitly targeted one gender or the other. For females, one fashion and lifestyle magazine aimed at single females (e.g. Cleo, Cosmopolitan) and the other considered a special interest magazine – one consisting of stereotypical female issues – home and family (e.g. Women’s Weekly, Redbook). For males, one magazine was the local fashion and lifestyle magazine aimed at single males (e.g. FHM, GQ) and the other was one considered a special interest to males –stereotypically, automobiles (e.g. Wheels, Motor Trend). In all cases, an effort was made to identify the magazine that offered the best combination of local origin and popularity with readers. Magazines from the March/April 2000 were used for the first wave of the study and, to be consistent with the first wave, magazines from March 2004 were used for the second wave. The use of URLs and/or ads for Internet-based companies were not expected to vary systematically throughout the year and the March-April period is free from holiday advertising in the US and Australia, so this was deemed to be a good period to examine "typical" advertising.

Ad Selection

All ads contained on the regular-size magazine pages and regular size card stock glue-in pages were coded for a variety of characteristics. The exceptions were any small blow-in or glue-in ads on card stock paper, clusters of quasi-classified type advertising commonly found at the end of the magazine (e.g. Serena the Psychic and other ads of that nature), and product placement mentions found in the fashion and cosmetic review articles of fashion magazine.

Coding Procedure

Content analysis is a widely used method to explore differences in advertising (e.g. Biswas, Olsen and Carlet 1992, Cho et al. 1999, Al Olayan and Kirande 2000). Coding variables considered in this study may be grouped into 2 broad areas: general characteristics of the magazine and detail on each specific ad. General characteristics of the magazine considered in this study included the country, magazine format, number of pages devoted to advertising and number of ads of each of the standard sizes (e.g. full page, half page). Ad specific characteristics included whether there was a URL in the ad, whether the ad was for an Internet-based company, the brand name and the product category. Coders were trained and supervised by the principal investigators and questions about specific ads were resolved with the consultation of the principal investigators.

Results

This study examined a total of 32 magazines – eight Australian magazines and eight US magazines for the year 2000, and eight Australian magazines and eight US magazines for the year 2004. Each magazine represented one of eight magazine formats. A total of 5,007 magazine pages were examined, and a total of 1,927 ads make the basis of the sample used in this study (see Table 1).

The research question regarding whether there were differences over time with respect to advertisements that mentioned URLs was tested (see Table 2). Chi-square analysis revealed that there were significant differences between 2000 and 2004. Ads that contained no Internet references significantly decreased over time and, conversely, ads that mentioned URLs significantly increased over time. In addition, there were significantly less advertisements for a website in 2004 as compared to 2000. It appears that including a Web address in print advertisements has become more widely used over time as part of overall advertising campaigns. The decrease in ads for a website may be due to the “dot com bust” or the shift of advertising dollars to other more cost-effective mass media.

Table 2
Advertising the Website over Time
	Year**
Web Reference	2000	2004	Total
No Internet reference	529	355	884
	51.1%*	39.8%	45.9%
Mentioned URL	456	527	983
	44.0%	59.1%	51.0%
For a website	51	9	60
	4.9%	1.0%	3.1%
Total	1036	891	1927
	100%	100%	100%
* Percent of the column
**= 58.20, df =2, p = 0.00

Differences over time in advertisements with URLs between the US and Australia were also tested (see Table 3). Chi-square analyses revealed that the US had significantly less ads that had no Internet references and significantly more ads that mentioned URLs as compared to Australia for both 2000 and 2004. This shows that Australia is not “closing the gap” with respect to Internet references in advertising – although the number of ads with URLs has increased over time in Australia, the US still has more ads that contain URLs.

	2000			2004
	Country**			Country***
Web Reference	Australia	US	Total	Australia	US	Total
No Internet reference	229	300	529	181	174	355
	65.2%*	43.8%	51.1%	51.1%	32.4%	39.8%
Mentioned URL	112	344	456	170	357	527
	31.9%	50.2%	44.0%	48.0%	66.5%	59.1%
For a website	10	41	51	3	6	9
	2.8%	6.0%	4.9%	1.0%	1.1%	1.0%
Total	351	685	1036	354	537	891
	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
* Percent of the column
** 2000 = 43.22, df =2, p = 0.00
*** 2004 = 31.22, df =2, p = 0.00

Product categories were also examined to determine any country and time differences with regard to advertisements that contained URLs (see Table 4). There were no significant differences within product categories between countries in 2000; however, it is interesting to note that business-to-business advertisements with URLs were very prevalent during this year. Chi-square analysis revealed significant differences within product categories between countries in 2004. In the US, ads for automotive and health products contained significantly more URLs as compared to Australia. Additionally, in these two categories, Australian ads have contained fewer ads with URLs in 2004 as compared to 2000. However, ads for cosmetics in Australia contained significantly more URLs as compared to the US. In this product category, Australian ads containing URLs increased in 2004 as compared to 2000 to become the category with the most URL references.

Product categories with the most URL references in the US have been consistent over time: automotive, health, and clothing/jewelry/accessories, while there has been a shift in product categories with the most URL references over time for Australia. In 2000, automotive, business-to-business, and health products contained the most URLs, whereas in 2004, cosmetics and clothing/jewelry/accessories became product categories with large numbers of URL references.

Table 4
URL References within Product Categories and Countries over Time
	2000			2004
	Country**			Country***
Product Category	Australia	US	Total	Australia	US	Total
Computer	-	4	4	4	1	5
	-	1.2%	0.9%	2.4%	0.3%	1.0%
Telecommunications	6	8	14	9	5	14
	5.5%*	2.4%	3.2%	5.3%	1.5%	2.8%
Financial	7	16	23	2	8	10
	6.4%	4.8%	5.2%	1.2%	2.4%	2.0%
Travel	6	7	13	12	5	17
	5.5%	2.1%	2.9%	7.1%	1.5%	3.4%
Automotive	21	64	85	25	77	103
	19.3%	19.1%	19.1%	14.8%	23.0%	20.4%
Health	11	51	62	13	54	67
	10.1%	15.2%	14.0%	7.7%	16.1%	13.3%
Food & Beverage	7	26	33	4	21	25
	6.4%	7.8%	7.4%	2.4%	6.3%	5.0%
Cosmetics	1	18	19	27	35	62
	0.9%	5.4%	4.3%	16.0%	10.4%	12.3%
Home Improvement	5	17	22	12	9	21
	4.6%	5.1%	5.0%	7.1%	2.7%	4.2%
Entertainment	8	15	23	2	19	21
	7.3%	4.5%	5.2%	1.2%	5.7%	4.2%
B2B	14	35	49	11	15	26
	12.8%	10.4%	11.0%	6.5%	4.5%	5.2%
Retailer	4	2	6	5	2	2
	3.7%	0.6%	1.4%	3.0%	0.6%	0.4%
Personal Interests	3	7	10	15	8	25
	2.8%	2.1%	2.3%	8.9%	2.4%	5.0%
Clothing, Jewelry & Accessories.	11	38	49	19	41	62
	10.1%	11.3%	11.0%	11.2%	12.2%	12.3%
Miscellaneous	5	27	32	9	35	44
	4.6%	8.1%	7.2%	5.3%	10.4%	8.7%
Total	109	335	444	169	335	504
	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
* Percent of the column
** 2000 = 22.27, df =14, p = 0.07
*** 2004 = 66.79, df =14, p = 0.00

These product categories differ from the results of a previous study that found that recognition of a Web address was highest for computers, telecommunications, financial, and travel (Maddox et al. 1997). However, almost one-third of respondents noticed an ad with a Web address for automotive and health products, which were product categories with high levels of URL references in the current study. Perhaps these industries have benefited from consumers utilizing websites to seek more information about these products.

Conclusion

The research questions for this study have largely been answered as expected. Compared to the year 2000, a larger percentage of advertising in 2004 contains URL information. Even so, the overall percentage of ads with a URL is small, 51%, considering the consumer expectations reported in some sectors (Barsh et al. 2001) in conjunction with the high Internet usage rates reported for both the US and Australia.

In the four-year period examined, the US has maintained the advantage over Australia in the proportion of ads that refer to the Internet. It can also be said that Australia has closed the gap somewhat; the percentage increase in ads with URLs is nearly 50% for Australia while it is only 30% for the US. Also noteworthy is the dramatic decrease in ads for a website evidenced in the US.

Maddox et al. (1997) studied awareness levels, finding that 83% of consumers claimed to have noticed URL information in advertising in general. It is reasonable to believe that in 2004 virtually every consumer would take note of web information presented in the various forms of offline advertising. One might also expect that awareness of web information in magazine ads, the type of ads studied here, would be significantly higher than the 20% of consumer reporting awareness of URLs in magazine advertising in the Maddox et al. (1997) study. So, expanding the use of URLs in magazine ads seems likely to create opportunities to plant a message with 20% or more of the readers – a worthwhile use of advertising dollars.

Computer products and telecommunication attracted high awareness of URLs in ads (Maddox et al. 1997). It is unknown whether or not this was in proportion to the actual levels of URLs in advertising for these products. Awareness, however, does say something about what ads were sufficiently interesting for people to read and thus what ads should contain website information for these products. Therefore it is striking that so few of the ads in this study showed URL information for computer and telecommunication products either in Australia or the US.

In the year 2000, the analysis of ads from the 8 magazines in the US and Australia failed to show a significant relationship between country and the distribution of URL mentions across product categories. Percentage of URL mentions was roughly equal across the two countries for each product category. In 2004, however, there are significant differences. Automotive advertising is a large proportion of the ads in these magazines and a high proportion of the URLs mentioned in US ads come from automotive ads, a result that mirrors Edwards and La Ferle’s (2000) results. Industry reports have noted that very high percentage of car shoppers use websites to shop for cars (65% for BMW, for example). Australian ads show high, and increased, percentages coming from cosmetics and personal interest products (e.g. sporting goods, books). This raises a question about how Australian businesses view online shoppers – as people who use the web for personal interest or as people who use it for more substantive decision making – and what successes and failures firms from various product categories have experienced in recent years.

Several questions and recommendations follow from these exploratory results. Maddox et al. (1997) reported a strong relationship between noticing a URL in an ad and self-reported visits to the website. Assuming there is a value-adding website to visit, the key managerial recommendation is to follow the general guideline to use the URL in all communication to the target audience. Large portions of the market are likely to notice them and act on them. Expanding the use of URLs in magazine ads seems likely to create opportunities to plant a message with 20% or more of the readers – a worthwhile use of advertising dollars. Naik and Raman (2003) and Stuart et al. (2003) show that cross-media efforts raise advertising effectiveness for a variety of communication objectives. Creating synergies between web activities and other forms of marketing communication depends on driving traffic to the website via knowledge of the web address. Finally, the large proportion of automobile advertising that contains URLs reflects the high proportions of car buyers who use manufacturer websites to research cars. Similarly, such understanding of the ways consumers use the Internet in other product categories may offer insight into the importance of using URLs in offline brand communication.

This study addressed the actual incidence of ads for websites and mentions of URLs while earlier studies either addressed these questions for TV ads or addressed consumer recollections of these ads. A valuable addition to this study would be to understand the correspondence between actual usage of web information, awareness levels and specific behaviors such as website visits.

References

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