Thought Leadership: “Rebooting online metrics”
Nielsen’s Louise Ainsworth on why the industry needs to rethink its approach to measuring online…
“Currency” is a hot word again in the online space, given the UKOM tender for an industry online planning currency. We’ve covered this topic at MediaTel seminars before. My view, and I am not alone, is that an online planning currency will help reduce the confusion in the market, will build trust and will attract more above-the-line brand advertising into a medium that has grown so far through direct and search. But will this be enough?
Premium media brands are hurting as audiences fragment and move online but brand spend does not follow. In a post-digital world, the amount of above-the-line spend moving online must grow significantly to maintain the quality and production values of online content. To enable this shift to happen we require more: more evidence that online inventory delivers the right audiences, more comparability between online and other media, more evidence that online creative builds brands. The perspective often cited is the need for better online creative.
I used to work in a creative agency, and I know how frustrating that is. Digital creative directors don’t just churn out banners and buttons idly in their spare time in between tweeting friends. As much blood, sweat, toil and iteration goes into an online campaign as any creative endeavour. Many digital creatives have extensive above-the-line experience from other media as well as a vision of the unique benefits of targeted immersive interactive advertising. The problem and the opportunity lie in what we are asking an online creative execution to do – it comes from the measures the industry is using and the way we are evaluating success.
Online campaigns are still largely measured on impressions delivered and clicks. Online publishers are incentivised to maximise inventory, by providing many banners per page, and agencies are incentivised to deliver campaigns which drive click through or low cost CPM. This is great for highly contextual direct campaigns (think small ads or property sections) but not for engaging-branded experiences. Add to that the need to sell ‘remnant’ inventory, with the associated commoditisation, and you can imagine that online creative will probably continue to be dominated by direct for some time.
Fortunately many of the major publishers and media planners recognise that loyalty, immersion, engaging context and advertising are important in attracting the audiences advertisers need to reach and the advertisers the publishers need to reach. The immersive inventory is out there and so is some great advertising. But using it to its maximum potential requires a leap of faith that can be just too difficult for some in these challenging times.
So, to deliver the goods when we need them, in this ultimately measurable medium, the metrics need to catch up. The good news is that it can be done – we can measure time spent and audience delivered by online advertising very accurately indeed (if you want to know how, drop me a line). It is possible to measure who saw the ad, how long for, and whether they engaged in any way. If the industry can join the dots and integrate that thinking into our industry evaluation of online advertising performance we can make a difference. It is possible for the online medium to reboot its metrics – to change the basis of measurement from ads delivered to audience impact – a major goal of brand advertising online.
Media Playground: www.media-playground.co.uk