You have a big problem. You're putting a great deal of money and time into creating compelling online advertising campaigns, but too often you're not getting any credit for all that effort. Sure, people are seeing those ads and may eventually end up making a purchase. But if they don't respond to them right away, you'll probably never know a connection was made. After all, you can't effectively measure the branding power of a casual glance, can you?
But the problem goes further than that. Not only are you not getting credit for all your hard work, somebody else is -- whether they've earned it or not. Sound fair? Of course it doesn't. But the reality of the current digital media realm has most of us in a quandary.
As an online advertiser with a message you need to deliver, you probably create display ad campaigns, rich media campaigns and more, plus you may be supplementing your digital efforts with plenty of print and broadcast ads. All in all, you're doing a pretty good job of getting your content out there, but the numbers you're getting back through your web analytics team may be a bit lackluster.
The main problem is that most marketers only measure the last step of the advertising process. Most of the consumers you cross paths with are only going to interact with or click on your ads when it means something to them personally. This means that you can run millions and millions of impressions, during which the consumer might see and actively think about your brand without taking any action, but you're not going to be able to score that as a hit until you can directly link an ad with an action.
Unfortunately the bigger problem here is one of accurately attributing what part of the cycle finally got the consumer to pull the trigger when they do respond. For example, let's say that you have been consistently communicating with a customer for months through various channels, and then that consumer finally realizes that what you've been offering is just what they need -- right now. They're thinking about that ad they saw a while ago, but it's just not in front of them right now. No problem! In a matter of seconds, they have a search engine open and are typing keywords to connect to your website. No problem for them, but a big problem for you.
If you're the search engine, then this is the ideal end result for you. But if you're the advertiser, you're looking at a big fat ROI goose egg for all your hard work. You do the branding, you buy the media and then the search engines swoop in and get to brag about how well they help consumers find what they're looking for.
Even if you manage to keep all the marketing activity "within the family," you often still run into the problem of not being able to accurately attribute the performance of specific ad units and, therefore, not being able to justify the ad spend. Maybe you have a killer rich media ad that made a big impact but it was your lowly display ad that got the click. Maybe it was those half page ads you bought that finally got the consumer to click on your text ad. But if it looks like those little text and display ads are the top performers, say bye-bye to your budget for those more expensive -- but higher impact -- ad buys.
Fortunately there is something that can help solve the attribution problem: view-through tracking. However, according to a 2008 Advertiser Executive Survey by JupiterResearch, only 21 percent of marketers track view-throughs as a way of measuring their campaign success.
View-throughs allow ad servers to anonymously tag consumer browsers with a cookie that makes a note that the consumer visited a web page that showed a specific ad. Even if the consumer doesn't click on that ad (and the vast majority won't), a causal link has been created between that ad and that consumer that enables the advertiser to identify a pre-existing relationship with that consumer if they visit the website for any reason and from any point of origin in the near future.
This means that the consumer who sees an offer five times through the course of surfing a number of sites but still chooses to use a search engine to make the final push to the website can now be identified and accurately attributed by the advertiser. Sure, the search engine might take credit for helping bring the consumer in, but the advertiser's agency and marketing folks now have a complete picture to work with. And that picture shows them that they can take credit for reaching the consumer along the way and that their marketing efforts are really paying off.
For most consumers, the majority of brand awareness takes place when they're not paying direct attention to ads. Thus, it's paramount to be able to track the direct relationship that a consumer has with your brand so you can learn what works, optimize campaign efforts and get accurate ROI measurement back in the mix.
Most marketers aren't going to complain if they start getting lots of site traffic from search engines and other links, but it's important to understand why people are showing up at a site and where they're coming from. Come to think of it, it seems we can indeed measure the branding power of a casual glance.
Marla Schimke is vice president of marketing for Revenue Science.
