Rocket Fuel: Measuring the Effectiveness of Online Advertising

by Zsolt Katona and Brian Bell


The case describes an experiment designed to measure the effectiveness of an online display advertising campaign. After running the campaign for their client, Rocket Fuel's analysts are tasked with proving that the campaign was effective and had a positive return on investment (ROI). The experiment involves randomly assigning Internet users to a test or a control group based on cookies that uniquely identify each user visiting a site where Rocket Fuel can place an ad. Users in the test group see an ad for a newly released handbag by TaskaBella, Rocket Fuel's client. Users in the control group are shown a public service announcement (PSA) that is unrelated to the advertised product. Based on the unique IDs, Rocket Fuel is able to track which user eventually purchased a handbag from TaskaBella, allowing the analysts to discern the effectiveness of the campaign. A detailed data set (rocketfuel_data.csv) is provided with the case that allows students to conduct their own analysis.

Learning Objectives


The purpose of the Rocket Fuel case is to:1) describe the steps involved in running a targeted display advertising campaign; 2) demonstrate the proper way to set up a randomized experiment to measure the effectiveness of the campaign; 3) allow students to analyze the results of the experiment using the raw data; and 4) teach students to distinguish between causal effects and correlations.

Details

Pub Date: Jun 30, 2017

Discipline: Marketing

Subjects: Sales management, Databases, Advertising, Marketing, Internet marketing, Customer acquisition

Product #: B5894-PDF-ENG

Industry: Technology, Advertising & public relations, Internet services

Geography: United States, California

Length: 6 page(s)


Berkeley Haas Case Series
Berkeley Haas Case Series The Berkeley Haas Case Series is a collection of business case studies written by faculty members at the Haas School of Business. Cases are conceived, developed, written, and published throughout the year, on subjects ranging from entrepreneurship and strategy to finance and marketing. Each case includes a teaching note for use in the classroom.

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