I researched a sample of 15 retailers (and a few direct to consumer manufacturers) spanning apparel and accessories, school supplies, computer hardware and software, and ancillary consumer electronics/entertainment categories for the period July 2008 and August 2008, the typical Back To School shopping period. I also looked at online advertising activity for these companies for the same period using our AdRelevance service.

It is worthy to note that Dell and Target are the two heavy hitters on online advertising impressions compared to all others in this sample. Although Amazon and Wal-Mart had significantly fewer online ad impressions than did Dell and Target, Amazon saw huge traffic to its site and Wal-Mart saw significant traffic as well. It seems that Dell has invested proportionately significantly more in online advertising during the BTS period to drive relatively lower traffic to its site than the other retailers.

For other retailers such as Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, OfficeMax and Office Deport, their spend levels and traffic seem proportionate. Does online advertising drive traffic? There is evidence it does, and there are other critical factors that drive online traffic, such as relevancy of retailer to the specific shopping period or need (here BTS), strength of the Brick & Mortar and/or online brand, etc.

Tags: back to school, online advertising, retail