Research Opportunities

From Creative to Conversion: Examining the Relationship Between Online Display Advertising and Customer Conversion for an International Travel & Tourism Company

Analytics at Wharton is delighted to announce a rich new dataset sponsored by Annalect, the data management division of the Omnicom Group, a leading global advertising and marketing communications services company. This dataset includes over 30 million exposures to email and online display advertisements from an international travel & tourism company, as well as more than 1 million conversions at the company’s website. Researchers will be able to track exposures, clicks, and conversions for 10.8 million individual users (tracked by cookies) for ~60 days. As tourism consumers typically shop over the course of several weeks, this gives researchers the opportunity to explore how customers search for information about a highly-considered product and how advertising affects the path to purchase.

The dataset includes:

  • details about the exposure, including the type of ad, identifier for the creative, size of the creative, where the ad appeared on the page, and the campaign the creative was part of
  • information about whether the user clicked on the ad, and if that click eventually led to a conversion
  • the type of conversion the user engaged in, such as exploring destinations or receiving a booking confirmation
  • flags estimating purchase behavior at the cookie level

Annalect seeks innovative and creative models that use this data to provide insight into advertising, attribution, and consumer search. Potential research areas could include:

  • improving attribution models
  • understanding advertising effects on path to purchase
  • predicting conversion based on prior browsing behavior
  • detecting returning users who are browsing on a different device, or have cleared their cookies

Note: This Research Opportunity remains open for proposal submissions. Interested researchers can submit proposals online through the Archived Proposal Submission Portal. Researchers are encouraged to review proposal submission guidelines before submitting their proposal. Additional questions can be directed to analytics@wharton.upenn.edu.

Research Teams

grantees of the data:

Didn’t Recognize You Without Your Cookies! Overcoming cookie gaps in the travel & tourism industry
Dave Bussiere, University of Windsor
Gokul Bhandari, University of Windsor

Assessment and Discovery: An Attribution Model Accommodating Rich Media Data and Audience Level Data
Jien Chen, Havas Helia
Qin Wang, Virginia Commonwealth University
Ward Thomas, Havas Helia
Stephen Easter, Havas Helia

Causal Inference in Large Observational Datasets for Marketing Attribution
Ryan Dew, Columbia University
Kinshuk Jerath, Columbia University
Jose Zubizarreta, Columbia University

Who Dropped the Cookie? An Analytical Model of Cookie Deletion Behavior
Vibhanshu Abhishek, Carnegie Mellon University
Shivendu Shivendu, University of California at Irvine
Daniel Zantedeschi, University of South Florida

Extensions to Traditional Attribution Models – Models and Methods
Keunwoo Kim, University of California at Los Angeles
Wayne Taylor, University of California at Los Angeles
Sanjog Misra, University of California at Los Angeles

Advertising Octopus
Chris Gu, University of Chicago
Yike Wang, University of Chicago

The power of creative: What ad should be displayed when and to whom?
Thorsten Wiesel, Marketing Center Muenster
Sascha Leweling, Marketing Center Muenster
Sonja Gensler, Marketing Center Muenster

KEEPING ONLINE ADS COMPELLING – THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT AD CREATIONS ON DISPLAY AD EFFECTIVENESS
Lara Lobschat, University of Groningen
Norris Bruce, University of Texas at Dallas
Ram C. Rao, University of Texas at Dallas

Disclaimer

The Research Opportunity webinars are posted here for a research-focused audience and should not be quoted, paraphrased or otherwise utilized without written permission of Analytics at Wharton. Any media inquiries or requests for quotes about the projects should be directed to analytics@wharton.upenn.edu.