The president and media director of Mass Transit Interactive gives his views on the direction of the interactive marketing industry.

As president and media director of Mass Transit Interactive, Jason Burnham trains and leads a team of interactive marketing professionals. To date, he has personally planned, managed and/or executed roughly 300+ online marketing initiatives, from media planning and buying, campaign management, and customer acquisition and retention strategies, since the company's launch in 1998. Some of the most recent campaigns Burnham has worked on include, Captain Morgan Gold, Priceline.com, Fuji Film, and the Rewards For Justice Fund. Burnham talked to iMedia Connection recently to give his views on the direction of the interactive marketing industry and suggestions for its improvement.

iMedia Connection: What's one of the most successful campaigns you've executed recently, and what made it successful?

Burnham: The campaign I felt was most successful would be our initiative for The Rewards for Justice Fund. Congress and the State Department established The Rewards for Justice program in 1984 to reward people who provide information on the whereabouts of terrorists. Two weeks after 9-11, we launched its first online initiatives. We found amazing support from the entire online media industry. Some people donated inventory, making sure we had prime placement on the top news sites, etc. Everybody wanted to do his or her part. The campaign ran for two months, and returned an investment of 20% of what was spent online. While we have seen greater performance with other campaigns, this one not only yielded a return on investment, it was great to be a part of something that would ultimately help, not just our country, but the world. It was more of a personal success than a monetary success.

iMedia Connection: What measurements did you use to deem it a success?

Burnham: We deemed it a success based on the donations we received as well as the overwhelming support from the publisher community in working closely with us to make this a financially successful campaign for RFJ. It definitely proved to the State Department that the Internet is a viable medium to gather donations.

iMedia Connection: What sort of new models can we expect in the future?

Burnham: The industry is definitely moving towards the direction of purchasing advertising based on audience, rather than gross impressions. In order for our industry to progress, it will be important that we provide metrics comparable to offline metrics. While the Internet can offer much more data and insight, reach and frequency metrics such as GRPs and TRPs will help pave the path for traditional marketer to embrace the online medium. It is also important to note that these should be used as additional metrics and not serve as a replacement for the metrics that have made the Internet such a great marketing tool.

iMedia Connection: Why is it better for a traditional marketer to go with an interactive agency than to advertise-direct with publishers OR take the entire workload in-house?

Burnham: Experience says it all. We do this day-in, day-out. We're constantly abreast of new opportunities to ensure that our clients are getting the best possible placements and rates. Because we have worked on countless numbers of online marketing and advertising programs, we are capable of providing greater insight into the performance of various content, audience, and environment against an array of product offerings, creative, and CRM initiatives. This coupled with the years of established relationships with the top publishers allows us to constantly be abreast of new opportunities prior to them hitting the market-place, as well as allowing us to leverage our buying power from aggregated budgets of our clients.

iMedia Connection: What remains the industry's biggest stumbling block?

Burnham: We're still dealing with discrepancies between ad servers. I don't think it will ever go away. It'll probably become more of a contractual issue. A lot of man-hours are going into the billing process, and that is costing agencies a lot of money. From a business operations perspective, much time and money would be saved if we can streamline the reconciliation process for billing.

iMedia Connection: Is there a same way to do CPA so everyone wins?

Burnham: I definitely think there are CPAs that can work. But it's important for the buyer and sellers to work closely in structuring the deal. One reason CPAs don't work is because buyers are not providing sellers with a complete overview of the goals and objectives of the clients campaign, and at the same time, sellers are looking at CPAs as something that should run as remnant inventory. Publishers should assess the goals and objectives to see if there is an appropriate fit within the various sections of their sites. In the end, you won't find too many CPAs that work for both advertiser and publisher. It comes down to targeted placements, which publishers aren't willing to give up because it's prime real estate for them. In the same breath, marketers need to assess long-term cost-per-acquisition numbers, rather than short-term. It's important to have a greater understanding of your customer base and project out (as far as possible) the life-time value of a customer. In most instances the numbers are much greater than the first initial transaction with a customer. I'm sure once the true customer acquisition costs are defined, many publishers would find the numbers much more feasible to work with and in many cases back out to a greater CPM than they ever anticipated. Again, both parties are responsible for success or failure of CPA initiatives.

iMedia Connection: Is there enough branding research to satisfy clients? If not, what needs to be done?

Burnham: Right now, I feel the biggest hurdle is the lack of case studies that pertain to any one particular marketer. As we define online branding metrics and can prove successful results for various products and services, we will find the more traditional advertisers embracing the medium. The lack of case studies, the defining of online branding metrics, and the lack of standards deter many traditional marketers from allocating significant budgets to online media. Not to mention it is much less expensive to reach your audience offline than it is online due to excessive duplication of reach at much greater rates.

iMedia Connection: What are your clients reservations about spending more money for interactive media?

Burnham: I would probably answer this as I would the last question. Because the majority of our client base has shifted to traditional marketers, many of the obstacles deterring our clients from spending greater dollars online are directly connected to the obstacles around the inefficiencies of online media. Internally, we are taking a proactive approach in addressing these issues, and with events such as the iMedia Summit, we hope to discuss further with our industry peers to discuss how we can overcome these pitfalls.

iMedia Connection: How can agencies encourage their clients to keep up with the reported increase in consumer media consumption?

Burnham: It is important for agencies to provide their clients with landscape of the online medium. We are constantly providing our clients with data, market research, and competitive analysis in order to provide our clients with enough information to make the most educated decisions as it pertains to their online marketing initiatives.