In an effort to better understand the impact of digital advertising, Google will be investing money to research the trend. Google will not be conducting the research alone. Instead, the Internet giant will join ranks with WPP, which is an advertising company based in the United Kingdom.

Together these two companies will contribute around $4.6 million into the research, which will take place over a three-year period. Google and WPP hope to gain a better understanding on how to balance web advertising with the more traditional forms of advertising.

It is not difficult for online advertisers to determine the impact of their ads because they can count the number of clicks that each one might receive. Despite this, several of the larger companies are still hesitant to turn to the web for advertising purposes. A group called Forrester Research determined that advertisers spend less than 10% of their budget on the Internet.

Google and WPP are hoping that they can determine what the key ingredients are for a successful online marketing campaign. Once they have a better feel for this it is thought that they can use the information to encourage more companies to spend additional money on web advertising.

This is certainly not the first time that Google has embarked on a mission to research web advertising. In the past they teamed up with a group called Publicis Groupe in an effort to learn more about web advertising.