Dr Ernst Osinga is an expert in online marketing who studies the impact of banner advertising for the web and for mobile. Just don't ask to be his friend on Facebook.
Dr Ernst Osinga is fascinated by digital marketing. The Assistant Professor of Marketing has authored papers on banner advertising, mobile ads, and in-site display advertising.
"I'm interested in how consumers make decisions in the digital world."
Given the fact that people are consuming more and more online media every day, it is not surprising that Dr Osinga would be interested in studying it.
What is surprising though is the fact that despite this interest, he is not personally a fan of social media. "I don't have a Facebook profile because I have never felt a need to share about my private life."
The 36-year-old is also cautious about giving out information online. "Sometimes, when apps ask for permission, I won't download it."
The lack of a Facebook account has not held back his research though. When necessary, he piggybacks on his wife's Facebook account. And while Facebook is important, it is not the only player in digital advertising.
As a researcher, he has found online marketing to be an attractive area to study because it is new territory. "It's a very novel area and many of the problems haven't been studied before," he noted.
It is also easy to do experiments, for example to get different groups of people to view different ads to see which work better.
In addition, there is no shortage of data to work with. "Digital is one area where finding data is very easy. Everything can be tracked very easily."
Based on his research, he has made a few interesting discoveries with implications for retailers. In one of his papers, he looked at the effects of banner advertising for companies that sell goods offline.
He found that banner advertising was effective in driving new customers to the store and reminding regular customers to go back to the store.
"If you measure banner ads by clickthroughs, you will miss out on these effects."
In another project, he looked at the effectiveness of mobile banner advertising. He collaborated with an ad agency in The Netherlands and ran an experiment where they switched off mobile banners in nine provinces and left them running in three others. They then studied the effect it had on sales and found that mobile banners had a positive effect on offline sales.
Dr Osinga has been working at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business since 2015, having previously worked in Tilburg University in The Netherlands. He received his PhD in Marketing (cum laude) from the University of Groningen in 2011.
Given his interest in studying online marketing, it might be natural to believe that he is some kind of computer nerd who spends all his time staring at his screen. In fact, the opposite is true. He has a black belt in taekwondo and he has just started learning Muay Thai, or Thai boxing. He also manages to find time to go scuba diving. For Dr Osinga, real life is much more enjoyable than life on the screen.
