This Associate Interactive Media Director sees advertising becoming more "media agnostic."
Jerry Courtney is the Associate Interactive Media Director at GSD&M in Austin, TX. Courtney oversees the Interactive Media Group at GSD&M, ensuring successful integration of work and process with the Media Planning Department. Clients include SBC, MasterCard, US Air Force, UnitedHealth, AARP and SAM'S CLUB.
In Courtney's nearly decade of media experience, more than half of his career has been spent working in new media across numerous accounts. Prior to his foray into digital media, he was a Media Supervisor at GSD&M working on SBC. He started his career in Minneapolis at Campbell Mithun.
iMedia: What has been the biggest change that you have experienced in the online advertising industry over the past year?
Courtney: The past year felt a bit like 1999 and 2000: a lot of interest from clients in new media, a decent shift in ad dollars towards new media, and a lot of excitement about positive results reaped from the investment.
Where it differed from the good old days is in the understanding that consumer media usage habits have actually changed. That fundamental change allowed the potential we were all so excited about five and more years ago to become reality. We didn't have to focus on basics such as click rates as key metrics, and we could have serious discussions about the value of the interactions resulting from our efforts.
This focus on the change in media usage habits led to greater interest and engagement from traditional media planning groups, as well as clients who have been more focused in traditional media. It's a good step towards becoming "media agnostic," focusing on the best overall solutions in delivering against key business objectives for our clients.
From a marketplace standpoint, with increased ad revenue, I think you're starting to see a bit of a shift in balance towards the sellers. There hasn't necessarily been a significant up tick in rates, but you can start to feel the tightness in preferred, sought-after inventory if you're not getting out in front of the planning and buying process and having to work from RFP to RFP. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it's a good sign of a maturing media marketplace.
It brings an interesting dynamic into play as we have to be aggressive in extolling the benefits of annual/upfront planning, while not limiting one of the key benefits of new media, flexibility, in going after high profile inventory and opportunities.
iMedia: What do you hope to accomplish or try this year?
Courtney: Encouraging more involvement and engagement with my colleagues in "traditional" media from the outset of planning. I want to get to that point of being "media agnostic" in our planning process, and I want those planners to be able to sell clients on the use of new media because it makes sense for their audience and their clients' products or services. Clients a lot of times hear my title and think I have "an agenda" and may be a bit skeptical. But if they hear it from the people they work with day in and day out, they know there's no agenda.
In keeping the diversification of media usage habits in mind, a media planner's role will become more and more important. As "the idea" becomes king, a media planner's ability to effectively include all media types in their toolbox during the objectives/strategies stage of planning is going to be crucial. It has to be about what channels of distribution resonate with the audience in best conveying "the idea," and what the best channels are to allow "the idea" to grow.
Within that, defining key metrics, whether it be old fashioned R/F goals, sales, softer brand metrics or some form of consumer interaction, has to be addressed early in the process. I don't think it can be assumed that what was seen as a good result before will continue to be so moving forward.
iMedia: What needs to be done internally as well as in partnership with the clients to better coordinate integrated marketing efforts?
Courtney: I think on both sides we have a tendency to jump too quickly to the tactics. To an extent, we've been conditioned to do just that ... get the brief then get the work done.
What has been encouraging in the past year is seeing a pause taken to more fully consider the facts and the issues of a situation and what business objectives (not communication objectives) need to be addressed. It allows for more creative thought in developing a core idea to build a solution around before thinking about how it'll look in a :30 spot or a magazine spread or a rich media ad. It lets people dip into that toolbox I was referencing earlier, ask some good "what if's?" really work through some scenarios, define the key metrics, then get into the best channels to distribute the idea.
iMedia: How do you evaluate media placements?
Courtney: I don't think there's enough space to get into the many and varied ways we do this. There's no silver bullet. From client to client, and from effort to effort for any given client, this is -- and should be -- a moving target based on what the ultimate goal is.
Less important than specifying how we evaluate media placements is ensuring that once our selection criteria are developed, we clearly and effectively communicate them within our RFPs to our vendor partners. The discussion and ideas sparked from an effectively written RFP make evaluation of media placements much more enjoyable.
iMedia: Behavioral targeting is a hot topic. Are you using it for any of your clients? How and what have the results been like?
Courtney: Yes, we have been using behavioral targeting in various forms, be it via a site's own methods of tracking and bucketing, or via TACODA or Revenue Science. From a pure media standpoint, you have to say it works because reaching people who have engaged or are engaged in specific behaviors of value to your campaign is successful, no waste of media delivery. It makes demographics a lot less relevant. As far as response rates and interaction rates after response or with rich media creatives, we have seen some campaigns perform better than others.
Let's keep in mind what was more or less the original behavioral targeting: search. It's hard to match the effectiveness of reaching the "hand raisers," as one of my supervisors likes to say, in the course of their search for specific information.
iMedia: Are any of your clients being affected by any consumer-generated marketing (CGM) -- blogs, user groups, etc.? Are they using any blogs or other social networking tools to market?
Courtney: CGM presents a Catch-22 for clients. They provide a very good barometer into public opinion and thought on many issues relevant directly to them or their business. How you go about participating in the discussion can be a dicey proposition since, in most cases, they are disillusioned with "mass" or "advertising supported" media channels in the first place. If they catch a whiff of something they don't like, they will call you out quickly and mercilessly.
However, we have seen success with social networking as it pertains to younger skewing demographics. The idea (Mastercard's priceless experience college internship program in music, movies and sports) meshes well with the needs and interests of those on sites like thefacebook.com and Friendster.
iMedia: Are analytics getting any easier? Where do you see this aspect of online marketing going?
Courtney: With a broader acceptance of the shift in media usage habits, campaign analytics have become a bit easier to report. It’s much easier to have discussions about the contribution of new media to the overall media mix vs. having to retro-fit direct response metrics for new media into audience delivery. Four to five years of cross-media studies from various sources are starting to pay off. We still have some issues, but it’s getting better.
Where we have been working to develop more and better analytics is in terms of interactions and the value applied to those interactions. This isn’t news for us working in new media; it just feels like we now have an audience that’s more willing to listen than we did before.
iMedia: We recently asked Brands what they thought the future of advertising agencies is. Want to weigh in on the topic? What do you think agencies' greatest role will be moving forward?
Courtney: We have to serve a broader role in helping to develop the best solutions to connect our clients’ brands with their customers. The exciting part of the diversification of media usage is the varied opportunities available to us to make that connection. The toolbox has grown quite a bit over the past few years. Social networks, wireless, blogs, podcasts, video games, new outdoor technologies, original programming and content (online or on air), and on and on. Good stuff and all very exciting.
That being said, coming up with these creative ideas is what agencies have always been good at; we just now have more pallets to work with. Beyond the ability to connect ideas and consumers, the two most key roles are:
- Executing on the ideas creatively and in media
- Defining the success metrics for the ideas
Without those two key pieces of the puzzle, we simply have a lot of great ideas and a bunch of “what if’s.”
There have been and will be a lot of growing pains because media vendors and producers of media have to adjust as well as the agency to make #1 occur. Number 2 must be a joint effort between client and agency; it is very important that metrics beyond audience delivery and media efficiencies can be agreed to since, many times, traditional ratings or measurements do not easily apply to these opportunities.
iMedia: What are brands still not getting about interactive marketing?
Courtney: There’s a disconnect or, in some cases, a disbelief that interactive marketing can be measured the same way as any other marketing vehicle. I wouldn’t say brands don’t get that as much as we as agencies have not done a good job of correctly setting expectations early in the planning process. It goes back to ensuring that at the outset of planning, all media are looked at equally in terms of delivering an idea and an objective. If that is done, then success metrics are not adapted by medium; they are what they are across the spectrum of media.
iMedia: What marketing or business books do you most recommend?
Courtney: I prefer to read history, especially about leaders or mavericks I admire, as well as books with broad social commentary, and find their application within my career and my life. A few I swear by are:
Lincoln on Leadership by Donald Phillips
Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris
Guns, Germs and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond