Seth Godin recently had a post called The 249% Solution, in which he referred to a Yahoo! study on how brand ads and search ads interact. The study found that for one Yahoo! client, (Harris Direct, an on-line brokerage), a "reasonable buy of banner ads" grew unaided brand awareness by 7% but increased clicks on text paid search ads by 249%.

Digging into the numbers a little further, the full study found that viewing banner ads on various Yahoo! pages had positive impacts on a variety of metrics:

• Aided Brand Awareness: Up 7%
• Brand Favorability: Up 32%
• Purchase Intent: Up 15%
• Searches on "related" topics: Up 61%
• Clicks on organic search results: Up 139%
• Clicks on sponsored search ads: Up 249%
• Activity on HarrisDirect.com website: Up 91%

Source: Slides 41-43 in Usama Fayyad's presentation.

These numbers are important since they provides data on how to connect soft metrics like brand awareness to hard metrics like lead generation. Every B2B marketer must strive to make these connections to justify their spending and demonstrate their impact on the bottom line.