After a quiet period on the blog, we're back with some exciting new research from a partnership with Deutsche Bank and GfK. We've been speaking to advertisers for a long time who have been trying to gain an understanding of how their purchase cycle works, and how they can attribute value correctly to each marketing channel. We know that there is a definite 'research online, purchase offline', or 'ROPO' effect, but many clients struggle to understand the real value that online marketing brings to their business.

Deutsche Bank, GfK and Google recently carried out a cross-channel path-to-purchase study for German financial services purchases. Please get in touch with your account team for more detail, but a few highlights:

• The majority of offline purchases are preceded by an online research process, therefore counting the number of contracts concluded online understates the role of the internet

• ROPO effect applies to 48.6% of new contracts: these are a combination of offline purchase preceded by an online research process and pure online research and purchase

• Pure online sales (10.8%) thus significantly understate the importance of the internet marketing in gaining new contracts

• The ROPO figure is much higher than typically concluded and shows that many consumers themselves underestimate their levels of internet activity

• Google is used by more than one third of all bank customers who do research on the internet before signing a contract

• Research conducted by Google users is more intensive: they visit more than twice as many domains as other users

• The average research process begins 7 1/2 weeks before the actual contract signing - so it is not the last click that counts. A continuous supply of helpful information can strengthen customer loyalty.

Source: GfK, Deutsche Bank Research & Google

We increasingly find ourselves speaking with finance advertisers about attribution modelling, and specifically about the consumer clickstream. What click journeys do users undertake before finally arriving at your site to get a quote or make a purchase? And vitally, how do you attribute value to each of these clicks in a fair and effective way, so that you can re-invest in keywords accordingly?

In an effort to better understand user behaviour around path-to-purchase, we recently undertook a study with Nielsen. There are some useful insights which we hope advertisers can use in conjunction with their own data to facilitate conversations around path-to-purchase and attribution.

Click here to access a preview of the study.

Highlights for Car Insurance:

• 6.5 million: people in the UK online Car Insurance market

• 60: % of car insurance purchasers who used Search during their journey

• 21: % of Car Insurance purchasers who used both Generic and Brand search terms

• 12.3: % of Car Insurance purchasers who used only Generic search terms

• 10: average consumer's number of days in market before first sales interaction

• 14.6: % consumer Look to Book rate for Direct Insurers in car Insurance market

Source: Nielsen