The Inside Line: Display & search, can you compare?
The first edition of “The Inside Line” focuses on the practice of using search metrics to measure display advertising. Each week we will take a key media topic and ask the industry for their opinion.
This week’s question:
Dave Schruers – Head Of Online, Initiative Media
“The important point is that you need to use the right metric, or balance of metrics, for your objectives.
At a micro level if you are driving sales or registrations or leads then a cost per x metric is the right thing to measure, however if you are looking at raising brand awareness or changing consumers perception you will need to use different metrics.
Display these days covers so many formats and types that you cannot have one view on how it needs to be measured.
On a wider channel level ultimately even softer brand metrics need to be benchmarked against cost, for example cost per % point increase in awareness, especially in the current economic climate.”
Matthew Dodd, Vice President Research & Analytics, EMEA, Nielsen Online
“CTR is and will remain a primary tool for measuring ad effectiveness since it is still a very valuable indicator of campaign performance given that it is trained at the end of the funnel.
As online audience and activity levels deepen, we now need to demonstrate to advertisers how online can also be used earlier in the cycle to drive awareness, consideration and brand favourability.
As such traditional effectiveness metrics, such as who saw my ad, how many times they see it and how did exposure change attitudes and/or intentions, should stand shoulder to shoulder with the CTR evaluation metric.”
Steve Scaffardi , Commercial Sales Manager, Haymarket Publishing
“Using the same metrics for search & display is unfair as both achieve different results.
If an advertisers campaign is all about direct response then using CTR is the ideal way of measuring its effectiveness.
However if an advertiser is running a display campaign to increase brand awareness, then CTRs only tell half the story- any change in brand awareness cannot be measured.
Therefore the metric used should be dependent on the ultimate aims of the clients campaign.”
Give us your view – email news@mediatel.co.uk
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