.Fox Networks and comScore Reveal Ground-Breaking Findings About the Branding Impact of Online Advertising

By Comscore Inc. .fox Networks, PRNE
Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Research confirms ability of video and display advertising to drive sustained brand engagement regardless of users clicking on ads or not

LONDON, March 25, 2010 - .Fox Networks (pronounced "dot-fox"), the leading global online network
from Fox International Channels (FIC) and comScore, a leader in measuring the
digital world, today unveiled the findings of a ground-breaking U.K. study.
The study, commissioned by online video specialist .Fox, used comScore's
single-source panel methodology to confirm that video and display advertising
are effective at driving significant uplift in site visitation and advertiser
search queries, even in the face of minimal clicks on ads.

(Logo: www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080115/COMSCORELOGO)

The study evaluated results from four campaigns across four industry
sectors and produced the following key findings:

    - Video and display advertising both successfully increased brand
      engagement in each of the four campaigns analysed. The average uplift
      across the campaigns saw site visitation increase by more than a factor
      of seven over a four week period following exposure to an ad, with
      consumers three times more likely to conduct search queries using brand
      or relevant generic terms in the same time period.
    - When evaluating video and display side by side, consumers exposed to
      video advertising were 28 percent more likely to visit the brand site
      and nearly twice as likely to conduct a trademark search.
    - Confirming expectations and previous industry understanding, video was
      able to generate a more immediate impact in the first five exposures
      than display ads in terms of increases in site visitation and search
      queries; however, behavioural response for those exposed to display
      climbed steadily as the number of ad impressions increased.

The results, which were released in full at the Advertising Research
Foundation's 2010 conference in New York on Wednesday, are also particularly
significant given sharp decreases in online advertising click-through-rates
over recent years, with the U.K. being the worst affected of leading global
markets.

The study underscores the fact that consumer search behaviour is
positively impacted by the presence of display or video advertising — even
in the face of minimal clicks. In each of the four campaigns, search activity
increased significantly when consumers were exposed to these online ad
formats, suggesting that the last click on a search ad should not be given
100 percent of the credit in attribution studies.

Commenting on the findings, Hernan Lopez, President of .Fox Networks and
COO of FIC said, "This study proves that online display and video advertising
drives significant results that are either being ignored by
click-through-based metrics, or wrongly attributed to search. We make an open
invitation to global advertisers to work with us and comScore in a follow-up
to the study, measuring the impact on actual sales."

"As the online industry seeks to increase its share of branding
advertising budgets, it's more important than ever to prove the value of
display and video ad formats", said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore. "This
research and our recent Whither the Click study for Europe are helping
marketers understand that the internet is indeed a powerful branding medium
and how vital it is to measure campaign effectiveness using the appropriate
behavioural metrics rather than just the click."

Anthony Rhind, Global Co-CEO, Havas Digital, one of the agencies that
sponsored the study adds, "This .Fox research is valuable because it looks
beyond the usual data used by the industry for media trading. As opposed to
relying on the usual simplistic denominators of click-thru & last event
attribution, this research centres on consumer behaviour proxies that are
better placed to reflect communication goals, defining success based on a mix
of visitation, engagement and search behaviour across a four week period. By
addressing difficult planning considerations such as cross format and
multiple touchpoint attribution, this .Fox research better reflects the way
Havas Digital believes campaigns must be evaluated if the digital media
industry is to continue to grow in terms of significance for major
advertisers."

The study was compiled examining four campaigns conducted in 2009 across
the Travel, Finance, Government and Utilities sectors. These campaigns
utilized various combinations of video and display formats and delivered a
total of 300 million impressions to U.K. Internet users.

comScore's panel of over 80,000 U.K. consumers was used to passively
track behaviour and understand the impact over time of ad exposure on
specific activities linked to campaign effectiveness, namely:

    - Advertiser Site Visitation
    - Search Term Usage

The studies compared the behaviour of internet users who were exposed to
the online campaigns with a control group of comScore panelists who were not
exposed. The control group was generated using a sophisticated pair-wise
matching process along a number of important demographic and behavioural
variables. The process ensured that control panelists visited websites in the
same category where the advertising was delivered but were not exposed to the
campaigns. It also paired test panelists with relevant control subjects based
on demographics, internet usage, connection speed, and other relevant
factors.

The full study was presented by Gian Fulgoni and Hernan Lopez at the
annual conference of the Advertising Research Foundation in New York,
yesterday, March 24th at 10:30am EDT.

Notes to editors:

About the study

Full study results were presented by Hernan Lopez, President of .Fox
Networks and Gian Fulgoni, Chairman and co-founder of comScore at the annual
Advertising Research Foundation conference on Wednesday 24th March in New
York
.

About .Fox Networks

.FOX Networks (pronounced "dot FOX") the online division of FOX
International Channels, is one of the largest international ad networks, with
150 employees in 20 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

The network serves +10 billion impressions to +50 million unique users
each month and leverages FIC's TV and online teams around the world to
facilitate the convergence of TV and online video planning and buying. .Fox
Networks is a wholly-owned subsidiary of News Corporation (NYSE: NWS).

www.foxnetworks.com

About comScore

comScore, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital
world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence.

www.comscore.com/companyinfo

Emma Murphy of .Fox Networks UK, +44-207-751-7680, emma.murphy at fox.com ; or Cathy McCarthy, Sr. Director of Marketing of comScore Europe, +44-203-111-1746, worldpress at comScore.com

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