re: measuring online advertising
SAMANTHA BEDFORD <sam_at_uDate.com> WROTE:
>I would like to find a piece of software that we
>enable me to really measure our online advertising
>campaigns beyond page impressions and clicks. I would
>like to know how many people register with our site
>and how many people actually become paid members from
>each banner campaign we run. Does anyone know of
>anything we can purchase to perform this task."
Great question! It is is getting asked a lot these
days. "How do I know if my advertising is working?"
The good news is you can know. There are several
steps in this process.
First, you will need a log analysis tool to look at
visitors. This tool must have visitor recognition
capability AND be able to present the online data
to a database in a format that it can read, for example
Oracle or SQL. The term for this is ETL (Extraction,
Loading and Transfer).
Next you would need a back end database where you
would hold the member information. In your case it
may have both demographic and transactional
information. You probably have a database already
that is storing this information.
Now comes the tricky part! There needs to be a thread
sewn from the log data to the offline data. It is a
thread that can identify the online user in your
offline database. Once this is done you will be able
to track a user from an ad click to membership. Beyond
that you will be able to segregate out "most active"
members and identify their traits. This is a very
powerful marketing tool. You'll be able to track
banner effectiveness with no problem as well as many
other meaningful metrics.
There is a fact in advertising that cannot be disputed:
"No one should spend money on advertising without first
being able to quantify the results". Like all smart
marketers, you want to acquire the best customers for
the lowest cost. The technology exists to do this
today in a much more cost effective way than just a
few years ago. If you are going to be attending
@d-Tech in LA next week, you'll hear this topic
addressed in several sessions. Additionally, I know
of at least three companies that can do what you are
looking for; Match Logic, Primary Knowledge and my
company, Optimal iQ. Feel free to contact me
personally if you need more information.
Tom Cuthbert
Optimal iQ
(888) 755-2040 Ext. 202
www.OptimaliQ.com
Received on Thu May 03 2001 - 12:42:31 CDT
