Jim Spanfeller candidly answers Joe's tough questions about the digital publication's Brand Increase Guarantee and provides insight into why he thinks it's an important step.

In my Jaffe Juice article last week, I spoke about clients needing to move beyond the pithy test phase and to put their money where their mouths are by conducting a real campaign.

The timing couldn't have been any better for this point of view, as it would seem that a real campaign may just be $100,000 over 60 days according to Forbes.com's new Brand Increase Guarantee, which conveniently creates the acronym: BIG. So for this week's column, I talked with Jim Spanfeller, CEO of Forbes.com about this initiative and his commitment to the interactive space.

Jaffe: Jim, let's start with the no-nonsense question: strategic marketing initiative or sales tactic?

Spanfeller: I'd say it's a little bit of both to be totally upfront about it. Clearly there's an element that this is an attempt to gain bandwidth, if you will, from advertisers who are either spending a little online or nothing online - and give them a reason to be confident that a test online will not hurt, and in fact will help branding.

Having said this, there is also a marketing side to this from a strategic standpoint. I just happened to stumble on this from a story I was reading about C-level executives looking for ROI in their advertising expenditures. This is nothing new except it did happen to spark in this situation the thought process that until up to now, the Web - as the most trackable medium ever - has had more of a laggard mentality to it in terms of adoption. People are still trying to figure out how to track response, achieve back-end fulfillment, and optimize and understand conversion, which in turn has kept clients from spending more on online campaigns. Another reason has been the fact that most of these numbers are created in a vacuum - and by that I mean, not transferable to other mediums, in terms of comparison to offline media.

So with all that being said, this seemed like a good time to turn a negative on the Web into a positive, in terms of guaranteeing ROI. If you advertise, we can track how well your brand attributes improve or not, and quite frankly, if they don't improve you don't have to pay.

Jaffe: Originally, when I saw the words ROI and branding together, I was a little concerned, but when I thought about it, it made so much sense because of a very important point, which is that media in general is just becoming more accountable, whether we like it or not, and technology is playing such an important part in this process. So the fact that you are putting your money where your mouth is, and in doing so, being able to look at branding more than just a warm and fuzzy, untrackable initiative, makes a lot of sense.

So let's talk a little bit about success criteria. Some feel that only one in four metrics is not enough and that all four metrics would need to move in order to guarantee success; others feel that any negative movement should qualify for a refund. Are these people missing the point of the whole exercise by dissecting this too finely or is there a point to their logic?

Spanfeller: We have to walk before we can run. This is a first - I think - for any medium in terms of this kind of a guarantee on a campaign-by-campaign measurement of success. So I wouldn't rule out the fact that at any point in time we might talk about identifying more than one attribute that would be the criteria for success or failure for any individual campaign. The other side of that coin and perhaps the pushback to these related questions is that we are to some degree at the mercy of the quality of the campaign that is actually run - so if the creative is great, clearly it's going to work a lot harder - and visa versa. So again, this is one of those situations in which we're walking first.

Any guarantee is more than anyone else is doing, either online or offline. We'll find out how it all works together.

Jaffe: It's interesting you say this as I did intend to address a publisher taking responsibility for an agency's or client's creative. And then I thought, Gee -- isn't that what got us into this mess in the first place? Wasn't it called clickthrough and cost-per-acquisition then and even now?

Spanfeller: Exactly.

Jaffe: But seriously, what steps are you going to take to ensure an acceptable or even minimal level of quality control?

Spanfeller: I think right now our thought process is that the vast majority of our advertisers are real pros. They're not just creating campaigns for Forbes.com, but for other Websites as well - and not just online, but using offline media too. No one is going out there to create a bad campaign. So if you take these things (professionalism and experience, together with a desire to create effective campaigns) together, the likelihood of someone having a creative execution that is so bad that it hurts their brand attributes is small. It doesn't go away, but it's very small.

That's why it's not going to be that big of a deal for us. Famous last words ... we'll see what happens.

Nevertheless, the weight we spoke about at the beginning of this interview - which we think will deliver at least four to five impressions to the required target audience over each of those months - will have the desired impact; people are going to see the campaign and have some response to it. So at least the brand recall is going to go up, which again speaks to why we're starting with one in four attributes. Perhaps favorability will go up as well.

Jaffe: As an industry, we're so far away from the awareness stage of the consumer adoption process. We've been too fixated on action and conversion, so I would agree that awareness as measured by recall is the perfect place to start.

NYTd's Surround Sessions built in interesting over- and under-delivery bonuses for their advertisers - any page views under the predefined cap would not count as a session and any pages over were thrown in as value add. What kind of parameters or conditions are we talking about in terms of both fulfilling the campaign prerequisites, while packaging an attractive investment in the process?

In other words, what steps are you taking in terms of outlining how you see the campaign run and in addition, prescribing any conditions about inventory, frequency caps etc. - or is it in fact an open book?

Spanfeller: An open book. The only condition I see coming into play is the definition of the target audience. If someone comes in looking for left-handed, red-headed CEOs for example, of which there are maybe 20, it's not going to be worth spending $100K over 60 days to achieve an effective media weight against these 20 people - and I guarantee you no one will. Short of that there are no other caveats.

Jaffe: I was thinking about it and $100,000 over 60 days is not really a sizable investment in terms of generating any kind of sticker shock essentially. In terms of facilitating a comparison, I was curious as to what a page and spread are going for these days in your print counterpart?

Spanfeller: The open rate is in the region of $70,000 for a single page and approximately $140,000 for a spread. So when you get into discount and package rates, it becomes easily comparable to people who are paying between $50,000 to $70,000 a pop to be in the magazine on a per-page basis, and quite frankly - obviously you've thought this through a bit - that's kind of how we arrived at these numbers, and the fact that the majority of our larger advertisers run over the same pattern of time.

Jaffe: So in essence there is a nice range that falls neatly between the smaller $10K tests and seven-figure portal deals of old, so you have pretty good room to move.

Spanfeller: Right

Jaffe: Is this offer open to only new customers or do existing ones qualify as well?

Spanfeller: Existing customers qualify as well.

Jaffe: I guess if you think about it, existing customers that are renewing obviously are happy enough with their investments, so the need to take additional steps to justify these investments with a branded environment like Forbes.com becomes somewhat redundant.

OK - here's my $100,000 question: Any interest yet from agencies and/or clients alike?

Spanfeller: Yes. We've got two folks who have already given us a verbal. We can't announce it yet, as we haven't spoken with them regarding permission to use their names.

Jaffe: The reason I ask this question is that we see a lot of publicized studies, but never get to find out "what happened next" in terms of increased spending or high-level client commitment to the space. So once you do sign them up, will you disclose or release the findings of the first B.I.G. campaign?

Spanfeller: We'd be happy to. Again to a large extent, there is proprietary information at stake. But if the advertiser is up for it, we'd be happy to share top-line results.

Jaffe: It certainly would be encouraging. If the industry had a wish list, it would be to find out (1) was this initiative successful and (2) did the client in fact renew and up the spend.

I'm not sure many people understand there are many clients and even agencies who aren't interested in research, which would potentially increase the size of the online investment. This is the "you've already got your 0.5% of the budget, what more do you want?" On the other hand, a DL study adds additional friction costs to the existing 3rd party ad-serving and multiple versioning production costs. In my opinion, this is a smart way of building in the efficacy required to help move the needle. To your point earlier, we'll see as an industry whether in fact the success determinants become one or more of the four brand metrics. But for the most part, to know that every Forbes.com client dipping its toes into the water has some kind of bundled efficacy is pretty comforting and encouraging.

Spanfeller: You're right on there with all of it. As an industry, it's our responsibility to prove the efficacy of online advertising. We've been trying to push research with all our large advertisers for the last year or so. So one of the reasons why we feel so comfortable with this is that we've done at least a dozen or so pre/post studies and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. Having said this, the Web hasn't been around that long. Maybe TV doesn't have to do it, but we do, so we might as well get along with it and do it. Maybe sometime soon we won't need to do it anymore, when everyone agrees that the efficacy is there.

Jaffe: You were quoted in a Wall Street Journal article on Tuesday as deciding to offer the money-back guarantee out of a "desperation to put the proper perspective on Web advertising" -- did something get lost in the translation?

Spanfeller: Something definitely got lost in the translation. What I said was "Are we desperate, life or death? NO!" But are we desperate to have marketers understand brand advertising on the Web? SURE!"

Jaffe: On a lighter note, if Jaffe Juice were a real drink what would its ingredients be?

Spanfeller: Probably a little bit of Tabasco, a little bit of ginger ale and I'd have to say, maybe a little bit of dry Gin.

Jaffe: Is that for the wit - or lack thereof?

Spanfeller: No, totally for the wit.

Jaffe: Jim - Good luck with this endeavor. We've known each other for a while now and I must say I've always been so impressed with your commitment to the space, your desire to try out new ideas and your receptivity in general, to feedback and suggestions. If there's any first-mover advantage that comes along, it's well deserved, and I hope you reap the rewards of sticking your neck out and trying something different. I'm pretty sure you'll benefit from both the strategic marketing and sales tactic sides to this endeavor.

Spanfeller: Thank you for that…and I hope you're right.