Atlas Analyst Jed Fowler walked iMedia Brand Summit attendees through how duplication of ad exposure impacts conversions, delivery and efficiency.

First impressions can be overrated in advertising as well as life. Sometimes it's not the first time when somebody says something that counts.

Anybody who has been married or in a relationship that has lasted more than the length of one dinner knows that you can say something to a spouse or relationship partner and have it bounce off impenetrable eardrums; then, when the lady next to your partner in the supermarket checkout line says exactly the same thing it comes as a stunning burst of new insight to the listener and an immediate source of consternation for you.

Online ads can work the same way. Generally, the industry relies on a "last ad standard" for reporting, ROI, performance and metrics. According to Atlas Analyst Jed Fowler, who presented at the iMedia Brand Summit in Florida this month, the last ad viewed model, "only shows a tiny, fractional, minimal slice of how consumers are interacting with a campaign."

Currently, media planners are, in Fowler's words, "making decisions about a subset of data, and sometimes making bad decisions." Internet users see ads multiple times, but these exposures are frequently invisible to planners who are assessing interaction based only on the last ad. When a consumer converts depends on many variables, since "campaigns reach consumers multiple times, across multiple channels, over extended periods of time," Fowler said.

To some, this might be a surprising statement coming from an Atlas analyst, given that "a couple of years ago, Atlas research said that nobody saw ads across sites… with less than five percent duplication" across sites, so there was no reason to worry, Fowler said. "This is no longer the case."

The growth of ad networks, portals and search have all lead "to consolidation and hence multiple views," Fowler said. In some cases, "you're spending four times the money on these viewers," and this is costing the advertiser a lot more money while only serving to pound the consumers over the heads with the same ads. This dynamic results in, "one third of users across multiple sites accounting for half the conversions," Fowler said, going on to point out that this was not only for direct response campaigns but also branding campaigns in the test group for a new measurement technology currently being tested by Atlas.

So, the problems of attributing revenue based only on the ad that converts a viewer to a customer is compounded by the fact that frequently the advertiser has no idea where else and when previously the viewer saw the ad.

"Current metrics are inadequate to measure overlap," Fowler said, going on to illustrate cross-site duplication using "the old gold standard… the Venn diagram" to show duplicated reach. The trouble with Venn diagrams as illustrations, Fowler said, is that, "nobody runs a campaign on only two different sites."

Atlas' effort to compensate for the shortcomings of previous results in a, in Fowler's words, "frightening table" that accounts for "every possible combination" of ad views across sites. (See Fowler's PowerPoint presentation for these charts.)

Media planners and buyers don't want this data simply for the sake of having it. "What they want to know is whether or not part of the buy is redundant and able to be killed," Fowler said.

However, Fowler cautioned that it can be easy to oversimplify certain kinds of data. One 24/7 Real Media case, for example, appeared to show 227 percent ad exposure redundancy, "but that's clearly nonsense," Fowler said. "You need to look at 24/7 versus the rest of the campaign overall. It needs to be a one-to-many comparison rather than one to one."

To grasp this data in the most helpful way, planners need an alternative mode of visualization: not the site or sites but the campaign, Fowler observed.

Panel data, like that coming from Nielsen//NetRatings or comScore, "gives an accurate sense of site overlap but no sense of campaign overlap," Fowler said. "No buy ever reaches 100 percent of the people on a site," barring something hugely expensive. 

The goal, and what Atlas' new technology purports to offer, is "a sense of each site's exclusive reach."  

After Fowler concluded his presentation to an enthusiastic response, a Summit attendee asked one key question: when would Fowler suggest using this new technology and why?

"As often as possible," Fowler responded promptly. "It's a good planning tool as well as a post mortem tool" to measure reach and overlap. And, planners can also, "use it halfway through a campaign in order to reallocate assets."

As the session wrapped up, Fowler concluded with a question for the brand marketers in the room: "Ask your media planners what the exclusive reach on each of your buys is."

Brad Berens is the editor in chief for iMedia Communications. Read full bio.