Let’s not make a virtue of complexity
UKOM’s James Smythe argues that the greatest obstacle in growing online brand advertising is a lack of confidence in the medium – caused by uncertainty amid the complexity of data and solutions.
Complexity costs money, let’s not talk it up!
Uncertainty has been driven by the increasing prevalence and complexity of solutions that aim to make marketing online more efficient and successful. The unwanted by-product is painting online as far more complex than traditional marketing which causes a lack of confidence.
Digital offers us a feast of information. So much that we think we’re well fed, but struggle to digest more than the sight of it. This apparent excess does nothing to improve advertisers’ appetite for digital, and makes it much harder for publishers and agencies to make a simple sales proposition.
Successful internet marketing should be based on the same fundamentals of consumer insight – which haven’t changed.
Three Myths of Complexity
An analysis of the data produced by comScore under UKOM’s industry oversight reveals some reassuringly normal and consistent consumer behaviour which will reassure rather than bewilder advertisers, and which echo our understanding of consumers’ use of traditional media. They also contradict three “myths” that have grown up about how the Internet is a complex and scary place for brands seeking to reach people;
1. “Consumer behaviour online is more promiscuous than in other content media”
2. “You can get more loyalty without growing reach”
3. “Replacing media brand-based targeting with cookie-based targeting must improve efficiency of brand campaigns.”
The assumption that tens of thousands of websites, video players and apps must mean that digital consumer behaviour is ridiculously fragmented has led to many of the assumptions we make today about the best way of reaching audiences online.
Digital first assumed an aura of highly targeted perfection, which was just asking for resistance: advertisers still prefer the apparent imperfections of TV for brand advertising spend, to the tune of roughly two TV pounds to one digital one.
Media companies and agencies have invested vast sums in targeting data and technology, only to find that the inherent complexity and need to protect proprietary algorithms gets advertisers concerned.
Publishers, used to a world where you can highlight and put a price on premium content and audiences, have seen audiences commoditised and have had no choice but to follow the headlong chase towards millions of Unique Whatevers.
UKOM’s job, in overseeing comScore’s suite of planning tools, is to address an industry need for comparability and clarity. Provide a clear and reliable plan that the brand advertiser can buy.
Confidence is everything and yet we also find ourselves victims of our own system’s complexity: there are six different, but equally important data sources, which go into a multi-platform audience number. All of them have been verified and most of them considerably enhanced through UKOM’s work.
But users want to understand how it works because their comScore number will never tally with their ABC certificate or their analytics, and explaining the methodologies is certainly no elevator pitch.
So to explain what we do, the best way is to demonstrate the consumer insights that users can get from the data. Let’s look at that first myth above.
“Consumer behaviour online is more promiscuous than in other content media”
BARB data says 95% of people watch one of the top 100 TV channels in a week. There are a few hundred in all but it’s not surprising that most people can find the bulk of what they want in those top 100. comScore’s data shows that exactly the same proportion of web users (95%) use the top 100 websites each month.
There are literally tens of thousands of websites, yet most consumer needs are fulfilled by a much smaller number. Moreover, the average UK web user goes to three of the top 10 sites each month, versus four of the top 10 TV channels. The pattern is the same – there is a finite use to more choice.
Dig into different categories of websites, and we see that the top few sites in each category account for the bulk of user visits. The top threes in search take 78% of page views, and 68% in the lifestyle category. Even in the fabulously well-resourced news and entertainment categories, the top three account for half of pages viewed.
Content may be king but it faces a formidable enemy in consumer heuristics. Us consumers just don’t have time to make the efficient and informed choices that marketers wish we would; we are creatures of habit offline and online.
This leads onto the second myth.
“You can get more loyalty without growing reach”
If we’re talking about like-for-like content such as one well-resourced news page versus another, or one VoD channel versus another, the proportion of an individual user’s time you get is directly related to the total number of users you get. It’s an age old consumer characteristic called “double jeopardy” that’s been seen in brand and media use forever.
Social media, instant messengers and adult content may enjoy longer session durations than other web content but they don’t enjoy a share of visits that is disproportionate to their absolute reach. In other words, to get more loyalty you need to reach more people.
So onto the final myth.
“Replacing media brand-based targeting with cookie-based targeting must improve efficiency for brand campaigns”
Cookie-based targeting may be a proven way of improving the conversion rate of people exposed to online ads, such as clicking on an ad or buying a product. However, the jury is out as to whether it’s a more efficient way of reaching people with brand messages using relevant web entities as is done in traditional media through certain TV programmes or magazines.
With the arrival of tools that measure whether ads are seen by the right audiences such as comScore’s vCE (fed in large part by the UKOM-verified panel that drives their audience measurement), cookie based targeting systems will no doubt improve. However, without such validation it must reasonably be used in conjunction with – not in place of – site-based targeting.
vCE’s charter study of major brand advertisers showed that once a target was as complex as two dimensions (e.g. men aged 35-54), the accuracy of cookie-based targeting fell below 50%. With a single demographic, it averaged 70%.
There are many websites out there with strong demographic biases that comfortably out-deliver these averages for both single and multiple audience definitions. Refining your plans with sites that are proven to deliver efficiently against your target is an essential step to making your campaigns far more effective.
James Smythe is the industry relations lead for UKOM, the cross-industry measurement body.