We have grown up measuring effectiveness of digital advertising on one common ratio - the click through rate, which we normally refer to as CTR or yield. Even as advertisers, had the liberty to go a step further and buy clicks or leads, without caring much for impressions which the publisher or the ad network is consuming to make the ends meet – effective results for the advertisers and profitable eCPM (effective cost per thousand impression) for himself, the magic ratio is still the CTR – a higher CTR results in higher eCPM for publisher, when the media is bought on CPC or CPA (considering the conversion rates don’t change) so that they burn less inventory to deliver the committed results and when the media is bought on impressions, advertiser guns for a higher CTR to get a higher ROI. Nothing wrong in doing so, a click through results in an extended experience and interactivity but what we keep missing out in terms of evaluation is the impact that impressions leave on a consumer’s mind. A CTR of 1 % can be considered extremely efficient across placements but that still leaves out the balance 99% of impressions which had an opportunity to be seen and get noticed or registered in consumer’s sub-conscious mind, but since CTRs and Click Throughs are easily available metrics we prefer to turn a blind eye to the impact display advertising can have on brand’s favorability.
Marketers would love consumers to immediately go and buy their product on seeing their advertisement, but does that happen? – NO. Are Marketers living with this reality? - YES. But since digital gives that opportunity, it has become a norm and an expectation from the medium. One of the banes of not being able to measure any impact on brand metrics like brand recall etc., the medium is shunned by the largest segment of advertisers – FMCG, for whom the click might not result in impacting their larger objective of marketing which is to occupy the mind space and create a brand preference over others. Although some brave ones have gone ahead and invested heavily in building destinations which have become central to their marketing plans, and since the advertising budgets for marketing these destinations are huge and cuts across mediums they get tracked in the standard brand track measure thus giving them some indicative brand impact from these investments. Some of the examples include the famous Sunsilk Gang of Girls which some say helped the brand change its persona from a traditional brand to a young and savvy brand or a JaagoRe.com which helped drive the core positioning and build a nationwide community. But exceptions aside, most brands won’t have the “might” or “moolah” to commit towards such heavy investments upfront. But, does that mean they should shy away from the medium altogether – NO. These brands should at least invest in digital medium for reaching out to their target audience, and then measure the impact not only from those 1 % impressions that resulted in a click (highly optimistic but nevertheless what’s wrong in doing so for building the hypothesis) but also from the balance 99 % impressions which were seen but not clicked.
The challenge has always been the lack of a metrics which could evaluate the impact of the non-clicked impressions. But with medium getting more main stream attention, we have started seeing some action on this front. Some Research & Analytics agencies have identified the opportunity and geared themselves up for the demand.
We guys at Quasar ourselves have partnered with a fellow WPP Research agency ( Milward Brown) to conduct a brand impact study for the launch campaign of Internet Explorer 8.0. The study is first of its kind in India where we are doing an exhaustive pre and post study for our display, video and viral campaign. They also have an interesting cross media research but that’s suggested for a multi media campaign to evaluate the impact digital has in conjunction to the overall campaign impact across mediums. These guys only seeded the thought of “Measuring the 99%”
Komli Media has recently launched Ad Catalyst for India, in partnership with Vizu - a digital brand impact measurement product, which can help you conduct quick and easy short surveys.
If you are an evangelist of digital media, all this should sound like music to your ears. Such third party evaluation should lend credibility to the medium and help grow the industry by valuing display advertising for its true worth and not just for the clicks it generates. If nothing more, it will lead digital to be evaluated at par with other mediums and that’s on how many eye balls it reached and not how many fingers it could move.
