Re: online targeting

From: Tim Lee <TLee_at_webcmo.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 07:00:39 -0600 (CST)

CLINT BALLARD CLINT_at_ACCELERATIONSW.COM WROTE:

>I thought we are trying to get conversions at the lowest
>cost, not just showing banners to people who are interested
>in the product. The Iconocast result does not imply that we
>want to find people who are less interested, just the
>opposite, since the conversion rate was 30 times! It just
>happened that the CTR was lower than the Untargeted group's
>CTR, this doesn't mean Targeted was less interested. It
>could mean that the population of people who converted 30
>times more are VERY busy and as a group have a significantly
>lower CTR, regardless of their interest level.

>It could also mean that impressions were counted in a very
>DIFFERENT way! I am not familiar with the specifics of the
>campaigns to know if the two campaigns used identical
>versions of the same ad serving software with the same
>configurations having placements in identical locations on
>the screen with the same frequency and identical browser
>targeting options shown at the same time of day. Unless ALL
>of these parameters are the same, you cannot make a
>meaningful comparison of CTR,
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes! The goal of most ad campaigns is to generate sales
instead of impressions or click throughs. However, there is
a very high correlation between click through rate and
conversion rate: the more interested your audience is in
your products, the more likely they are to buy. That is the
general rule. However, this rule does not apply to this
comparison from Iconocast. So before we use this comparative
result in our decision, we need to understand why targeted
banner generated lower CTR but higher conversion rate.

Clint's speculation is that the targeted audience is too
busy to click the banner or there were other factors
influencing the campaign result. But a speculation is a
speculation. Before we can prove this assumption, we are
unable to conclude that although targeted banner generates
lower CTR, it has higher conversion rate.

There is no doubt that in this campaign, targeted banner
generated better result. However, we use any numbers for two
different purposes: to report a campaign result or to make
statistical inference from a result. In this case, the
result was reported for the second purpose.

My point is: we are unable to make any conclusion from this
piece of information. The result is not wrong but the
conclusion from the result is wrong.

Regards,

Tim Lee
Editor -- Journal of Web Marketing Research
http://www.WebCMO.com
A site dedicated to web marketing research.


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Received on Wed Feb 17 1999 - 08:32:14 CST