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Earlier this year online advertising overtook TV and print advertising expenditure for the first time in the UK as companies continue to chase a growing Web audience. This milestone, reached a year ahead of many commentators' expectations, has seen ad spending flow online with a growth of 4.6 per cent to £1.75 billion in the first half of 2009, despite the entire advertising sector contracting by 16.6 per cent during the same period. What's more, new research conducted by Microsoft Advertising and BrandScience proves those using online advertising are seeing tangible results.

Recently, the two companies analysed over a quarter of the top 100 retailers in the UK using econometric modelling with the aim of understanding the effect of retailers' marketing activities on sales. Although this technique is usually used for one brand at a time, what this research has done is aggregate a number of econometric modelling studies for 26 out of the top 100 retailers in the UK. Using sophisticated statistical techniques, BrandScience has then been able to identify the impact each driver has on each performance measure.

In short, the research illustrates that online advertising is more efficient in terms of revenue return on investment (RROI) for retailers in comparison to other media. In particular it has been shown to deliver the highest RROI for online retailers, and statistics indicate that its return on investment is still yet to peak.