As director of media strategy, Adam Gerber oversees a group of more than 20 digital media planning/buying experts, and manages all strategic development and day-to-day execution on behalf of The Digital Edge. Current assignments represent a range of category experience, including AT&T, Xerox, Bristol Myers Squibb, Campbell's, Colgate Palmolive, EJ Gallo Winery, Pizza Hut, and KFC. Gerber currently serves as chairman for the 4A's Eastern Interactive Marketing & New Media Committee, and is active on the Atlas DMT, Comscore, iMedia, ABCi, AdTech, and MSN industry advisory boards. His 11-year media career includes a broad array of assignments across both consumer and business-to-business brands at top global advertising agency networks. Gerber talked to iMedia Connection recently to give his views on the direction of the interactive marketing industry and suggestions for its improvement.
Meet Adam at the upcoming iMedia Summit in Keystone, Colorado, December 9th through 12th.
iMedia Connection: What's one of the most successful campaigns your company has executed recently, and what made it successful?
Gerber: Our Xerox OPB (office printing) campaign. We were tasked over 1½ years ago to help drive leads in an aggressive cost-per-lead structure, and that program has been growing ever since we started it. We've delivered hundreds of thousands of leads to Xerox via a qualified sweepstakes campaign that pushes users to an information jump page and a short sweepstakes entry. As part of the entry we qualify users with short business-related questions, then group those responses into essentially hot prospects or just general leads. Those are passed on to retail and third-party salespeople for additional follow-up. The campaign has been running on all the major b-to-b sites, targeting IT managers and those related to business purchase decisions. The initial projections by the client were that this would not be as efficient as direct mail. But we found it was significantly more cost effective, and the quality of the lead has held up.
iMedia Connection: Can your company point to evidence that suggests online advertising and marketing are contributing positively to branding metrics?
Gerber: We run Dynamic Logic almost every time we have an online awareness campaign, and we've seen consistent success across the board. We were also involved with IAB Phase 2, and, although I can't comment specifically on that just yet, I can say that in general the results have been positive. We've seen good news across all our clients when we dig into qualitative metrics.
iMedia Connection: In this post click-through era, what kinds of new metrics are emerging as the new measurement standards?
Gerber: It depends on the campaign objectives. I'd break them down to direct response and branding. With DR, we look at things like you'd expect beyond click-through. We're looking at conversion rates from the clicks, impression to conversion rates, also the cost effectiveness of the program, cost per conversion or lead, basket size metrics, and repeat visitors metrics. On the branding side of the equation, we still have a long way to go. Everyone's still trying to get closer to the traditional metrics like actual audience reach and frequency of exposure. Also the question of actual ad exposure will become relevant. Right now impressions are still counted on server calls, as opposed to when the ad displays in full.
iMedia Connection: How does the issue of relationship marketing tie into the future of online marketing?
Gerber: It's a huge component, but it's dangerous to talk about online marketing as one kind of discipline. Online marketing really is three to four distinct types of marketing disciplines, all of which can be executed over the Web. There's direct response, brand awareness, CRM, merchandising and selling. CRM is an absolutely critical tool that marketers are just now figuring out how to use. Few are doing it well, because doing it well means you have to have back-end synergy. You have to tie together call center data, retail outlet data and advertising related data, so you can understand how you're consumers are interacting with you. Then you can communicate back to them appropriately. Few companies have been able to tie all those data points together, mostly because they typically sit at different locations on different systems.
iMedia Connection: Have you piloted any early Reach & Frequency planning on behalf of your clients? What kinds of results did these analyses reveal?
Gerber: We've been testing the IMS tools and the Atlas DMT reach & frequency tool. But we're not sharing or utilizing these systems across all our clients, because we still think there's need for refinement. But we are using it directionally.
iMedia Connection: Will day-parting become known as one of the Internet's best practices, or is this perhaps more hype, than hope?
Gerber: It depends on the client. For a lot of clients that have day-part needs, it will become a huge value proposition. To be able to target someone before lunch or prior to going home from work to feed the kids is a tremendous value proposition that TV can't deliver.
iMedia Connection: Are you recommending Gator and its technology to your clients, or is there a certain amount of angst?
Gerber: I don't want to single out Gator. I'd rather talk about the concept of URL targeting or application-based ad delivery that is not properly explained to the user as they download the application. We are not currently recommending those opportunities to our clients. For openers, there's still outstanding litigation with regards to URL targeting and pop-ups over publishers' content. We also question the benefits of application-based ad delivery in situations in which users are not entirely sure why ads are popping up on their screens. We've tested them and found there's a lot of user push-back. We don't think it's an inappropriate application on the Web, but there's a need for better disclaimers and better management of the user's overall experience.
iMedia Connection: Are your clients increasing their interactive spend over time? What does 2003 look like relative to 2002?
Gerber: As we thought would happen, 2002 was a transitional year. A lot of test work was done. Across the board, we're seeing much better integration of the Web into our clients' overall media planning practices for 2003.
iMedia Connection: What remains the industry's biggest stumbling block?
Gerber: Non-traditional ad delivery, reach & frequency evolution, impression measurement, bigger ads/less clutter, improved branding research, e-mail marketing clean-up, creative unit/technology standardization, and terms & conditions.
iMedia Connection: What knowledge can you share to bridge the gap on how to better serve marketers' needs in the online world?
Gerber: We've learned as an integrated online division of a larger media shop that the best solutions and best development processes are to become fully integrated with the overall media planning process of a client. And to get a seat at the table, upfront, and to understand a client's objectives well before plans and budgets have been allocated. Sometimes traditional planners and clients don't see how online can contribute. If you don't have that initial input, you've lost the opportunity for online to participate in the year's planning. Clients need to push their agencies, and agencies need to push their clients so that online is viewed as one component of the overall media process.
