FMCG & Media: 3 techniques to measure ROI

Speaking from the floor at MediaTel Group’s FMCG & Media event in association with O2 Media yesterday morning, Mindshare managing director, Ita Murphy, pushed the panel on ROI for mobile marketing in the FMCG area – one of the biggest stumbling blocks for agencies. She said clients are interested in mobile ideas around FMCG advertising but still need a clear sales measure.

The panel agreed that this is a key issue for the FMCG and mobile sectors. Jason Wills, senior brand manager of Desperados & Tiger Beer at Heineken UK Ltd, said he finds it hard to justify social and mobile ad campaigns because of a lack of solid data. “I am just doing it by instinct at the moment… in the short term, this is a real challenge for the industry”.

Dan Hagen, head of planning at Carat, talked of three techniques (some future-looking) to solve the problem.

Firstly, econometrics, which Hagen says is worthwhile despite some difficulties around input and data. Secondly, agent based modelling (ABM). The concept of ABM has been around for a long time but there has not been mainstream adoption by the marketing communications industry. ABM aggregates disparate data to create ‘agents’ (simulated people) that are representative of the real world population. Hagen described ABM as “fascinating” and said Carat is trialling it with two clients at the moment, and hopes to have working case studies late this year.

ABM is designed to understand individuals, which should allow marketers to understand how different user segments behave as a function of marketing campaign exposure.

And thirdly, attribution modelling based on a single cookie. “The reality is that we don’t have a single cookie but we are trying to merge cookies using various data like sign-ins… it gives us a really clear picture of digital,” he said. Hagen sees a future where attribution models cover multi-platforms – mobile, internet, television – potentially allowing the industry to track a much larger part of the customer journey, although this will no doubt raise some concerns around privacy issues. He accepted that there remain problems with all three techniques in terms of measuring ROI but said “we need to keep trying”.

Claire Valoti, managing director at O2 Media, reiterated that tracking the full customer journey through to sale is the “holy grail” and said it is a “big priority” at O2. However, she admitted that there is currently a lack of knowledge about how mobile links with online and social.