Introduction

Online sponsorship is straightforward. It’s just a case of mirroring existing ‘real world’ sponsorship arrangements in the ‘virtual world’, right? Well, actually no. While this is, of course possible, there are many more opportunities for sponsorship online, even if you don’t have a big budget at your disposal. It gets better; despite all the type about interactive advertising, we will review research which suggests that online sponsorship may be a more effective use of your budget.

What is online sponsorship?

We tend to think of traditional sponsorship as a branding tool – its purpose is to increase brand awareness and favourability and to a lesser extent, purchase intent – to create a ‘warm feeling’ around a brand. Sponsorship occurs through advertisers paying for an association with a diverse range of things, from personalities, sporting events, charity support, consumer or trade events to print columns and reports.

All of these traditional sponsorship activities can also occur online. For example, sponsors of sporting events or football or rugby leagues will refer to the sponsorship both on their own web site and will also gain exposure through placement on the web site for the event or league. In the case of sporting events, the great thing about online is that involvement with the sporting event from its fan base will ensure that a lot of people will engage either with the company or event web site and the association will grow. For example, Coca Cola sponsor the football ‘Championship’ in the UK and there name will be prominent when fans are searching online for information about their teams. A disadvantage of the mirroring online of offline sponsorship is that online the association will be diluted and will be more difficult to control. Googling ‘Coca Cola Championship’ also brings up sites commenting negatively on Coca Cola. There will likely be many other sites that refer to a sporting event, but the sponsorship may not be mentioned.

Another common form of online sponsorship that mirrors offline sponsorship is the advertorial where columns about specific topics can be created and sponsored by the brand.

So what is different online?

The online environment gives many more, often lower cost sponsorship arrangements of different types of content on online media sites. Articles or columns can be sponsored and so can interactive tools and communities.

Reflecting these opportunities for sponsoring content online, Ryan and Whiteman (2000) define online sponsorship as

“the linking of a brand with related content or context for the purpose of creating brand awareness and strengthening brand appeal in a form that is clearly distinguishable from a banner, button, or other standardized ad unit”.

The last part of the definition is stressed to recommend that sponsors of content online should take care that the sponsorship arrangement is explicit. Ryan and Whiteman (2000) note that if an online sponsorship appears simply as a banner ad, then site visitors are likely to suffer from ‘banner blindness’ and may blank it out. They say that such sponsorship gives the worst of two worlds : little branding value and lousy direct response results. Text is often used to show the sponsorship association. Sometimes the difference between an online ad and online sponsorship is limited. For example, some button ads on portal Wanadoo are labelled “in Partnership with Wanadoo”, yet these are more ad than sponsorship!

For the advertiser, online sponsorship has the benefit that their name is associated with an online brand that the site visitor is already familiar with. So, for users of the ISP Wanadoo, with whom they are familiar, sponsorship builds on this existing relationship and trust. Closely related is online ‘co-branding’ where there is an association between two brands. This is not usually labelled as a sponsorship, but the benefits of the association are similar. For example HSBC has a strategic partnership with Yahoo! which mutually benefits both parties when their brand identities are displayed together. This strategic alliance has also led to other initiatives which are extensions of the principle of sponsorship such as the money transfer service ‘Yahoo! PayDirect from HSBC (http://paydirect.yahoo.com)’.

Microsite sponsorship

One of the biggest differences with online sponsorship is that rather than just creating awareness and favourability, we can use the interactivity of the medium to build and develop relationships. Sponsorships can link though to microsites either on the sponsored site or on the advertisers own site.

Sponsored microsites can be used for E-permission marketing (See http://www.wnim.com/archive/issue2504/emarketing.htm for an introduction). By using attractive incentives, microsite visitors can be persuaded to opt-in to an online dialogue – e-mail addresses, profiling information and customer communication preferences can then be captured and e-mails can be sent to continue the dialogue and build the relationship towards sale. The microsites can then, if appropriate, be used to build a community of users which encourages repeat visitors. Opt-ins are typically higher when the microsite is placed on the media site since visitors will already have a relationship with the media owner and may be happier to provide their details.

Lexus achieve opt-ins through Guardian microsite

An example of using such a sponsored microsite is Toyota’s £200,000 investment to support the launch of the Lexus RX300 SUV through a sponsored microsite on the Guardian (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/microsite/time). This site themed around how we use our ‘Time’ was connected with the Proms and other summer events. The site achieved 90,000 page impressions and also registered more than 5,500 competition entries with a 48% opt-in to future communications from Lexus – so database building through direct response was one of the results, and this is not usually achieved through offline sponsorship. A prominent brochure request panel was also used, but this proved less successful achieving only 73 requests. Likewise a PDA initiative only garnered 30 e-mail addresses. The effectiveness of the sponsorship was increased by a range of ads targeting relevant content on the site and through e-mail ads of which 700,000 impressions were served. Another success factor the microsite was its topical focus on our lack of time today, with editorial titled “Too tired for sexe” driving interest from elsewhere in the site and other media.

Often, as in this case, online sponsors will find that people are more likely to opt-in to an e-mail dialogue if the microsite is integrated with the media site rather than directing visitors to the companies own site. It seems that opt-in rates are higher where there is already a relationship with a site.

Furthermore, online sponsorship tends to be more successful compared to online advertising, in creating visibility of a brand online since it is typically a longer-term arrangement than tactical ad campaigns so it is possible to generate a frequency that is sufficient to enhance brand awareness and favourability.

Webtrends sponsor ClickZ to drive subscriptions

Longer-term sponsorships can be combined with e-permission marketing with incentives varying through time. A great business-to-business example is offered by WebTrends who sponsor the customer information channel on ClickZ.com (www.clickz.com). They combined this sponsorship with different ads each month offering e-marketers to learn about different topics such as search marketing, retention and conversion marketing through detailed whitepapers and “Take 10” online video presentation by industry experts which could be downloaded by registered users. The objective of these ads was to encourage prospects to subscribe to the WebTrends WebResults e-newsletter and to assess purchase intent at signup enabling follow-up telemarketing by regional distributors. WebTrends reported the following results over a single year of sponsorship:

• List built to 100,000 WebResults total subscribers
• 18,000 Take 10 presentations
• 13,500 seminar attendees

In this case, prominent sponsorship of the column added to the WebTrends brand recognition and reputation which in turn boosted the success of the ads.

Finally we should note that the popular Pay Per Click “Sponsored Links” provided through services such as Google Ad words and the Overture and E-spotting network are nor really sponsorship at all – they are typically paid ads directed at increasing purchase intent.

Research – How effective are online sponsorships?

An interesting study by Performance Research (2001) compared differences in the perception of the online audience to banner ads and sponsorships. Respondents were shown a series of Web page screens; for each, one-half of the respondents were shown a similar version with a banner advertisement, and the remaining one-half were shown a nearly identical image with Web sponsorship identifications (such as “Sponsored by”, “Powered By” and ‘in association with’). The results were illuminating. Of the 500 respondents, ratings for different aspects of perception were:

• Trustworthy (28% for sponsorships to 15% for ads)
• Credible (28 to 16%)
• In tune with their interests (32 to 17%)
• Likely to enhance site experience (33% to 17%)
• More likely to consider purchasing a sponsor’s product or service (41% to 23%)
• Less obtrusive (66% to 34%)

Dynamic Logic (www.dynamiclogic.com) who provide a service for assessing the brand impact of online campaigns has also demonstrated the benefits of online sponsorship from the analysis of its MarketNorms database.

Exclusive sponsorships most effective?

It isn’t surprising, given the clutter on many web sites, that research suggests that exclusive sponsorships are most effective. A interesting test was conducted by Volvo to understand both the branding value of advertising sponsorship on the Internet as well as the difference between the value of “exclusive” sponsorship (when an ad is displayed exclusively on a site) as opposed to “shared” sponsorship (when there is more than one advertiser on a page.).

IAB (2003) reported that in a sample group of 1,514 visitors “exclusive” online sponsorship produced considerable lift as compared to a negligible lift from “shared” sponsorship. Specifically, “exclusive” sponsorship produced a 6.1 point lift in brand consideration among those consumers exposed to the sponsorship. Shared sponsorship did not achieve this uplift.

E-newsletter sponsorships

E-mail marketing is well known as a retention tool based on in-house lists, but what about its use as an acquisition tool? The two best known approaches are to rent third party e-mail lists or to create an e-newsletter which is used to deepen a relationship leading, eventually, to trial and purchase. Third-party e-mail list rental can be problematic in terms of list quality and level of response.

However, there is another option – sponsoring an e-newsletter or part of its content. This will often be tied into sponsorships on the site where the e-newsletter is hosted. The WebTrends-ClickZ association mentioned earlier works in this way. E-mail sponsorship for a text or HTML e-newsletter can be a good option where there is not sufficient content you can deliver an e-newsletter, but you want your brand to remain visible.

Sponsorship impact in e-newsletters tends to be higher than for web sites. Once someone has opened an e-mail and is scanning or reading it, the sponsorship is typically more visible to the reader than on a web site, provided the e-newsletter is designed appropriately. Avoidance of clutter will make this association most useful – premium sponsorship at the head of the e-newsletter is always more effective. The e-mail newsletter can again be used as a direct-response vehicle to deliver incentives to achieve opt-in as well as achieving branding effects.

Article: August 2004

References

IAB (2003) Sponsorship Effectiveness Survey Interactive Advertising Bureau Advertisers Forum. Presented at New York, NY (September 10, 2003)

Performance Research (2001) Performance Research Study

“Mastering Sponsorship On-Line”. http://www.performanceresearch.com/web-based-sponsorships.htm

Ryan, J. and Whiteman, N. (2000) Online Advertising Glossary: Sponsorships. ClickZ Media Selling channel. May 15, 2000.

About the author

Dr Dave Chaffey is workshop leader for a range of one-day e-marketing training workshops from the CIM:

• E-mail Marketing (www.cim.co.uk/0766)
• E-CRM Planning (www.cim.co.uk/1137)
• Marketing Research Using the Internet (www.cim.co.uk/1135)
• Running Effective E-marketing Campaigns (www.cim.co.uk/0767)
• Improving E-marketing Performance (www.cim.co.uk/1138)

Go to www.cimtraining.com for course details and online booking.

Dave Chaffey, trainer and consultant for Marketing Insights Limited (www.marketing-insights.co.uk) and E-marketing Director at Ripe (www.ripe.co.uk). He is a prolific e-business author whose books include ‘Total E-mail Marketing’, ‘Internet marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice’ and E-business and E-commerce Management.