A New Year’s resolution for the online advertising industry

2015 needs to see the end of click-based measurement, argues Phil Macauley, EU managing director, Quantcast.

Is the online display industry currently polarised? On one side we have some truly great technology that is allowing advertisers to target ads like never before and pick their perfect users out of a sea of millions with a direct, measurable response.

On the other side however is a steep, potentially long-term decline in a users view of the brand, due to high frequency, repetitive, poorly targeted ads driving negative brand association and increasing price sensitivity over the long term.

A necessary change

This balance is nothing new, neither is the conclusion that we need to start focusing on that ‘long term branding through to consideration effect’ rather than short term goals. Similar to the financial sector we have happily ignored what we know to be true in order to go after short-term wins and it is quickly degrading the public view of online advertising.

At the Supernova Big Data Summit in London, Phil Georgiadis talked about ‘Digital Chuggers’ (charity muggers), comparing those advertisers that chase you around the web to the charity workers on the high street trying to get you to sign up to a direct debit.

Of course the technique pays back and the ROI stands up to some scrutiny. But what about all those people who cross the road to avoid the chugger? Or those people that actually get annoyed with continuously saying no? What if one of them was on their way to a lawyers office to arrange their will and with a choice of two charities in mind, chose the one that they hadn’t just been annoyed by on the high street?

These are the kind of impacts that are immeasurable in the short term, yet over the long term, creating a strong brand and maintaining a loyal customer base are the factors that create real success.

First steps

It’s obvious what we need to do; 2015 needs to be the end of click-based measurement. A click has nothing to do with actual performance, it does not take into account accidental clicks and it certainly doesn’t help in the fight against click bots.

CTRs and last click attribution models actively encourage the short termism inherent in the industry. By focusing on clicks we encourage vendors to employ very high frequency techniques, which results in ads on cheap inventory and the advertiser missing out on premium users.

Advertisers take the lead

To get the ball rolling, one thing needs to happen; advertisers and agencies need to take the first step by fixing their attribution models. If these models move away from click-based metrics then the whole industry will follow suit.

Of the powerful trio of advertisers, media owners and agencies, it is the advertisers and the agencies that hold the power to advance the way we do business including how incentives are set for vendors. We are starting to see early adopters utilising new attribution methods but we need to take more positive steps to drop traditional, click based models.

Elsewhere it is important to create a culture that is neither just tech nor just advertising, but rather one that understands both. A tech-only focus does not take into consideration long-term brand impact and an advertising only focus will not take into account how the ad tech works or what it can do given the right set of incentives or goals.

Solid attribution solutions will, for advertisers, simplify the tech, provide the insight to set appropriate goals and help avoid the wrong outcomes. All this leads to the realisation that we can still have that conversation in online advertising.

We can track a user from site to site and instead of pushing the same pricing promotion over and over, we can present a story, an idea, a brand that, at a relative frequency, will grow over time into something much more worthwhile than a quick buck at the expense of a brands reputation.

Let’s make online advertising better for the New Year. Let’s make this a New Year’s resolution for the online advertising industry.

NB: All quotations are from the Quantcast Supernova Big Data Summit London, October 2014