Google and ad holding company WPP have teamed up to fund a $4.6 million research program to study the effects of online marketing on brands, sales and consumer decisions.
The Google WPP Marketing Research Awards program will offer up to 12 grants in the $50,000-$70,000 neighborhood to academic researchers investigating a range of questions about the interaction between online and offline media, audience engagement and effectiveness metrics.
The program will be under the oversight of Prof. John Quelch, senior associate dean of the Harvard Business School; Google chief economist Dr. Hal Varian; and Prof. Glen urban, former dean of the Sloane School of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“We’re very pleased to be working with WPP to encourage new insights into online advertising,” Google senior vice president and president of advertising operations for the Americas Tim Armstrong said in a statement. “As it becomes more challenging to reach consumers through any one medium, we hope programs like this will help drive a deeper understanding of how marketers can engage consumers, both online and offline.”
The awards directors have posted some sample research topics on the Google research Web site.
These include:
- How does a brand establish a framework for assessing how much should be spent online?
- What are the best models for mobile advertising?
- What are good guidelines for moving traditional video spots from broadcast to broadband?
- How can advertisers be welcome in social networks?
Besides its funding contribution, WPP will supply researchers accepted into the program with access to the annual Brandz study of brand perceptions produced by its Kantar Group subsidiary, along with the media data generated at media buying division GroupM.
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