NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Online measurement and targeting
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Online measurement and targeting
Philip Atherton (philip_at_philip-a.demon.co.uk)
Wed, 26 Nov 1997 14:39:56 +0000
>As the co-publisher of an advertiser supported content
>site (www.theautochannel.com) I am always looking for a measurement
>service that really defines the way the web delivers for its
>advertisers.
Dear Bob (and all who read and participate in on-line ads) I think we all
share this common concern, but some key issues are being overlooked in the
pursuit of chasing ratings comparable to TV audiences and other mass media.
I don't think that this should be the high ground for justifying web
marketing.
First, there is the issue of targeting - getting or getting to the right
sort of prospective customer or consumer. In this sense, web sites can be
viewed like traditional broadband media like TV and press.
A recent example from my own experience was a client who wanted to target
expats. The expats we want are people who have time on their hands, are
self-motivated and enjoy learning about a subject. The volume of traffic
isn't as important as the qualities I've just described because with
precise targeting we will attract a better conversion rate and my client
would sooner spend $10 on a qualified prospect that than a more generalised
expat audience.
Second, there is the issue of tracking. This is where the back-office
auditing systems should be ringing up cash tills all over the world. By
tracking the route visitors take through a web site and using split tested
pages, it should be possible to provide statistical and informative
information on what motivates visitors, what they want to see and more
important, what they want to do at a web site.
Now even in the world of direct marketing with sophisticated
customer-retention programmes, this level of tracking and analysis isn't
available. Well it is for a few advertisers but the systems that support
direct marketing weren't designed to deliver this level of interogation.
The tracking issue is IMHO one of the most potent ingredients for
attracting advertisers to multi-media marketing which leads onto my third
point:
The web is an interactive medium. Repeated research polls show that the web
is trawled for information and research (40-50%), then e-mail (30-40% of
memory serves me right) and other forms of communications like the
newsgroups (10%).
After some 30 years in the advertising and direct marketing profesion I'm a
little bewildered that interactive marketing using WWW and other channels
of communication/distrubtion hasn't woken up to the fact that all the
information you need to attract customers can be found through the
Internet.
Indeed, most advertisers suffer from information overload which is why they
pay me to summarise and develop an information profile to help them market
more effectively.
>Yesterday I spoke with a new web rating service that is
>hoping to put the web in the same box with TV and Radio as a measured.
I hope that the above comments address this issue of TV and radio
measurement. I don't think that we should be influenced too much by
traditional planners. Planners have to understand what makes interactive
marketing work. Many, I feel, still fall into the hole of classical
measurement.
By way of an example, we have just completed an e-zine to ink project. This
involved putting up a skeleton of pages which were tracked to see who did
what and where they went. We stripped out pages, added new ones and
developed as many involvement devices to see how potential users would
respond.
The outcome was that where the client would have published a single printed
magazine for customers, three different versions are being planned,
targeted to the life-cycles of the customers.
In hindsight, much of what we did was common sense. But we only arrived at
this by testing and using web pages that could be changed quickly. And
developing successful ones to see whether the rate of viewing could be
increased.
>wouldn't a smart advertiser jump at the chance to
>have this identification on every page of a relevant magazine or have
>their logo always displayed at the bottom of a TV networks programs?
The key measurements I'm using at the moment are participation (what people
do) and duration (how long they spend doing it). So we're looking at the
ways in which people "play" with the brand.
Given that the brand is a shorthand for a consumer's total understanding of
a product or service, interactive marketing gives advertisers the chance to
encourage targeted groups to interact with this relationship. And early
indications are that they love to do it!
>Sponsorship positions on content sites can do just that for web advertisers
The problem is one of critical mass. Recently we've been working on a
CD-ROM give-away to sports people. On the sponsorship argument, clients
know that there are other ways to reach them with sufficient volume to make
the investment worthwhile. That's not to say that sponsorship doesn't or
can't work. It has to deliver something in the media mix that other
channels like TV programme sponsorship can't deliver. For instance, TV
sponsorship could use web addresses far more effectively so that they work
in concert with each other.
>It seems that saturation frequency is now a bad concept in the
>advertising world, not because it is not highly effective but because
>most of the media buyers, planners and client ad management are too
>young to remember that you really could afford to buy reach and
>saturation frequency on the other media...well here is some late
>breaking news...saturation advertising works and you should buy the
>web this way...don't waste ad money on big reach sites if you don't
>buy all the reach...in fact the bigger the reach on a site the less
>opportunity an advertiser has to economically make an impactful
>impression on the visitor...Today's interactive media decisions are
>all screwed up...
Let's be a little generous with younger planners and advertising people. In
the UK, the impact of customer loyalty programmes has made a huge impact on
the way advertising tools are employed these days. I go back to my earlier
argument, 'Wouldn't you sooner spend $10 on someone you know could have an
affinity with your product than $10 on trying to build an affinity.'
Targeting has become an issue of using the rifle instead of the cannon to
get your message across and build customers.
I hope that this is of some help. Thanks to all of you for the stimulating
post I read from this group.
Philip Atherton.
Partner, The Other Department.
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