Having worked at Performics for the past three years, Larkins offers his insight into what works and what doesn’t in the world of online advertising.
Stuart Larkins currently holds the position of Vice President of Media and oversees media buying, planning and media relationships for properties ranging from small mom and pop affiliates to large partners such as DealTime, MSN, Google and Overture. Larkins entered the company with a professional background in business process management, offering his expertise in putting organizational processes into place. By being able to apply his past experience of building relationships and leveraging technology, he was able to quickly establish a process for media buying at Performics. We talked with Larkins recently to get his insight into what works and what doesn’t in the online advertising world.
Meet Stuart at the iMedia Summit, May 4-7, in Scottsdale, Arizona.
iMedia Connection: What’s one of the most successful “DR” campaigns your company has executed recently, and what made it successful?
Larkins: We buy media based on an agreed upon ROI so all of our campaigns are successful to some extent. One recent example is Road Runner Sports, an online running apparel company billed as the World’s Largest Running Store. We launched an online campaign for them in the fourth quarter of 2002. The campaign is successful because it covers the breadth of online media and marketing services that we provide. We launched an affiliate program that focuses on niche sites for runners, search marketing with sites like Overture, Google and AltaVista, and portal deals such as for MSN.
The campaign is successful because the ROI we determined with Road Runner from the onset has been met across all channels. In addition, the Reach & Frequency that we delivered for the client, which is measured by the sales volume we drove, was extraordinary. Therefore this campaign combines both branding and direct response.
iMedia Connection: Can your company point to evidence that suggests online advertising and marketing are contributing positively to branding metrics?
Larkins: The residual impact on the brand from Road Runner being on thousands of very targeted affiliate sites such as regional running clubs in New York and L.A., combined with placement on a huge portal like MSN and various content sites, really has a valuable impact on the brand.
We don’t measure branding metrics for our clients, but our clients agree that there is great value to the residual branding effect for any online campaign whether it’s measured by Reach & Frequency or measured by CPA.
Our goal for clients is to determine what their ROI needs to be for a campaign online. Keeping the ROI metrics is the way we afford to spend to get that Reach & Frequency and sales volume.
iMedia Connection: Are third-party Internet traffic-measuring services useful beyond being something you have to subscribe to get R/F data?
Larkins: As a matter of fact, we use them quite frequently, even though Performics is not a branding agency. For example with RedEnvelope, we took the audience profile highlights from comScore/MediaMetrix's AiM (Audience Insite Measures) tool and ran that against media targets that share similar demographic, lifestyle, and buying habits. That data, in addition to data from AdRelevance, helps us tailor our online distribution strategy. These tools often identify content sites where there may not be a propensity to buy the product, but we can still learn a lot from the data. So even though we are not buying on pure brand Reach & Frequency, we see these tools as very helpful.
iMedia Connection: Are most of your clients taking advantage of day-parting or is this perhaps more hype, than hope?
Larkins: Performics’ clients enjoy an important advantage with day-parting -- specifically in our search marketing services. Performics really dives into the data and not just time of day but in the context of time of week and seasonality. We look at everything down to the granular level for all of our clients by analyzing data on an individual keyword basis.
One example of the power of day-parting is for Bose Corporation where we were seeing a huge amount of traffic in the off hours between 11 pm and 6 am, but conversion rates really plummeted during that time. We investigated and realized that the search traffic during those hours was predominantly coming from overseas. Bose is a big international brand so they drive traffic overseas, but the client doesn’t ship overseas from their U.S.’ Website. So we lowered our click costs during hours that couldn’t drive sales and optimized the overall ROI of the campaign. You can’t run an effective branding or direct-response campaign without conversion tracking so you can manage ROI. Really looking at the data means looking at time of day and seasonality at a very granular level.
iMedia Connection: What remains the industry’s biggest stumbling block?
Larkins: Standardization. It’s quite clear that is one of the biggest stumbling blocks. You hear everyone talking about standardization of creative and ad size. That’s all fine and understandable. But the real standardization [challenge], I think, is on the technology front. One of the biggest stumbling blocks marketers face is integrating data feeds with various Web property partners whether it’s an MSN, a DealTime, or a CNET. They all have different formats and different standards. Performics has tools and technology that facilitate integration for our clients so we are in the trenches with these partners and we know the challenges they face. The industry could definitely benefit from some technology standardization.
Another very weak point in standardization is how everything is tracked and reported. Everybody has a different tracking system, a different reporting system, a different variable for counting visits. I know the IAB is really putting a focused effort on that, but I think that needs to be highlighted. Even more than the creative and the ad size, I think technology and the tracking are quite crucial. Obviously at Performics we believe that marketers must track conversions since that’s a critical component of our performance-based programs.
iMedia Connection: What knowledge can you share to bridge the gap on how to better serve marketers’ needs in the online world?
Larkins: What Performics does for our clients is we educate them on how to look at online marketing -- not just as branding but also to incorporate some kind of defined action or response. The Internet is a two-way channel and it’s ripe for direct-response opportunities like sweepstakes, surveys and registrations. It doesn’t always need to be a monetary action to be a meaningful response.
For example, we do customer acquisition for Sony’s new loyalty program called “My Sony.” Sony is obviously one of the biggest brands in the world, and when you do any advertising or any marketing online for them, they get a lot of eyeballs. So when we launched the campaign for “My Sony,” we sat down beforehand to really determine what they’re looking for as a measurable result of an action and what they intend to do with the results. All too often we see huge brands running campaigns, collecting all this data and not doing anything with it. It’s a waste really. You get so much valuable data that you should really analyze what you need to do with it and, before you launch the campaign, have metrics in place that will let you benefit from the effectiveness of a successful or non-successful campaign.
iMedia Connection: Have any of your clients successfully utilized any emerging technologies, such as IM, wireless, iTV, etc.?
Larkins: To date the emerging technologies haven’t been a viable option as a direct-response medium so I can’t really say we’ve been pushing them. But we certainly think they could have some powerful applications in the future. Location-based couponing could be a very powerful way to drive sales offline and help close the loop between online marketing and offline sales. We will look for the technology to get brighter and faster. I think it could become a good medium for us to get in the direct-response world, but right now, I think it’s purely for branding, and it works well. I get an ad for Lexus every time I load up my PDA and go to AvantGo.