Research Reveals Importance Of Accountability
Marketing professionals responsible for major advertising budgets rate proof of return on investment above winning awards, audience research and brand identity when assessing their ad campaigns.
New research from VAR International shows that marketers would strongly support the development of performance linked advertising if it could be measured directly against sales conversion.
Despite return on investment (ROI) being something of an industry buzzword at the moment, the research reveals that accountability is a long way off in advertising. According to the survey, “intangibility” and a “degree of wastage” are accepted as unavoidable facts of marketing life, with both advertisers and agencies acknowledging that a lack of sales accountability is inherent in many ad campaigns.
Commission Junction, which sponsored the study, is keen to convince agencies and advertisers of the benefits of pay for performance online advertising. According to the survey, 8 out of 10 respondents were positive towards the proposition that paid for performance advertising could change the focus of their marketing budgets.
Nicky Iapino, managing director of Commission Junction, commented: “Marketers are under growing pressure to make budgets go further and do more for less. No matter how creative and award winning a campaign may be, commercial reality dictates that tangible and measurable ROI must be at the top of the list. No wonder marketers are showing such interest in finding the missing link for directly correlating advertising spend to hard sales.”
Return on investment is a hot topic at the moment and will be the central area for discussion at the 2003 Advertising Effective Symposium in Frankfurt this June (see Ad Conference To Address Issues Surrounding ROI).
Charlie Makin, chief operating officer at BLM Group, recently argued that the increasing popularity of ROI is more to do with media agencies seeking to move up the food chain than about a genuine desire to provide greater accountability to clients (see NewsLine Column: ROI: Another Buzzword Bandwagon?).
Commission Junction: 0207 659 0435 www.cj.com
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