Digital is trying to tackle perceptions that it is a tactical only media as growth slows and the swing back towards brand gathers momentum. According to a new report by Kantar and the IAB, digital delivers brand impact more cost effectively than offline media.

The Digital Brand Effect is based on 145 Australian Kantar cross media brand effectiveness studies, over 1,300 global equivalents, and some 14,500 global Kantar digital brand lift studies. Its findings suggest long term retained brand impacts for digital campaigns are at least on par with those of other media with 20 per cent of the original brand impact of digital campaigns retained for eight weeks after the original exposure.

Online video and social and online display were also found to have a higher share of brand impact compared to the share of spend. The report finds that digital touchpoints pay their way back in building key brand building metrics including awareness, brand associations and motivation.

IAB Australia CEO, Gai Le Roy, said the report uses aggregated results from a "large pool of campaigns" to provide deeper insight around using digital and traditional media in tandem to deliver stronger brand results.

"The narrative that digital advertising is a purely performance media with little long-term brand impact that has become particularly loud of the last couple of years is a complete fallacy," suggested Le Roy. "A wide range of respected independent research companies have been able to demonstrate that digital does have strong brand building ability over many years." 

The report shows that digital advertising excels when it is part of a multimedia campaign, demonstrating strong synergies when differing digital media channels combine, as well as complementing offline media. Up to 45 per cent of digital brand effects are a result of working with other digital or offline media to produce synergistic effects, while up to 22 per cent of digital brand effects are a result of working with other offline media.

Kantar Australia executive director of media and digital, Mark Henning, said the conversation around performance of individual formats is misguided. Marketers must not forget the basics, he warned.

"The reality is that advertising works best when it’s multi-channel and multi-discipline. As consumer consumption patterns shift and we move into new advertising formats, it will be even more important for marketers to consider the basic tenets of advertising best practice and to actively implement campaigns that are multimedia to ensure optimum brand outcomes.”

Findings from report include:

• Success is not driven by increased campaign spend but by designing creative with context in mind, integrating digital campaigns with other media and managing frequency
• Online display advertising was found to create meaningful brand differences and build brand associations, with impact 42 per cent higher than investment. Online video was found to drive brand motivation with a 30 per cent higher impact than investment

• Brand salience for social and video formats has improved 144 per cent over the last eight years; social brand ROI has improved 90 per cent for brand motivation due to improved reach, better formats and ad units