A recent study by EyeSee, a leader in behavioral research, showed that ads on e-commerce sites can increase brand purchase by an incredible 40%. However, the lift may not occur in the way you’d expect. A relatively small number of consumers click on the ads themselves. But the right ads can have a significant impact on consumer purchase behavior in another way.

Inclusion of Online Shopping Ads Increases Attention Time

Before we talk about the specific approaches to drive increased purchase, behavior, it’s informative to note that  just including ads on e-commerce landing pages increases attention time. EyeSee found that product lists with ads are browsed 20% longer than those that don’t include ads. That means more time for brands in front of consumers.

What’s more, online shoppers viewing product landing pages (PLP’s) with ads see 10% more products overall.

These factors work together to produce a 14% increase in product purchase interest.

How Brands Can Drive Even Greater Performance

In their study, EyeSee tested a variety of different landing pages and ads to see which had the greatest impact. One set of product landing pages (PLP’s) included ads, while another did not. The firm also compared the performance of ads that promoted a specific SKU from the list of available products below with ads that promoted products from the same brand, but which were not available in the list.

The key to better performance?

Ads that promoted available products from the list performed significantly better than those that did not.

Take Your E-Commerce Display Ads to the Next Level

Of course, it’s hard for brands to know ahead of time which products are going to be included in the product list.

Fortunately, with creative automation, you can generate banners that include a variety of different products automatically. You can even configure ads to be generated based on which products are in-stock, ranking well in a given category, or other factors such as the weather, sporting events or upcoming holidays. Regardless of whether you’re looking to create new traffic for products or drive lift for products that are ranking well in e-commerce site search results, creative automation is your key to unlocking increased sales.

Contact us to find out more about creative automation for e-commerce today.