Just like a grizzly and failed measure to stop the bubonic plague, digital advertising is in danger of facing some unintended consequences, writes Zenith’s Richard Shotton
If you had to exterminate London’s rats, what would you do? It’s a Herculean task, so you’d need help. How about offering a bounty for each dead rat?
A grizzly incentive, certainly. But it’s exactly what the French colonialists in Hanoi did when faced with an outbreak of bubonic plague in Spring 1902. They offered a small fee for every rat’s tail handed in.
And they got their wish – tails began to pour in. Hundreds each day in March and thousands in May, peaking on June 12th at a staggering 20,114.
But there was a problem. Despite the growing tail collection, the rat population didn’t appear to be declining. In fact if anything, there were more rats – but they were tail-less.
The plan was a victim of unintended consequences. The bounty had unleashed the entrepreneurial spirit of the populace, who were feeding rats, lopping off their tails, and setting them free.
The target encouraged the specific behaviour that was rewarded – handing in rats’ tails – but not the underlying intention – a reduction in rats.
This farce is not unique. There have been similar instances with cobras in colonial India and, more recently, wild pigs in Georgia, USA. Each time, a simplistic target had the opposite effect to that intended.
Unfortunately, we face similar unintended consequences in digital advertising.
Naive measures decrease campaign performance
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Advertisers, just like the colonialists, are trying to resolve complex problems with simple targets. Of course, the details are different – brands are grappling with unsatisfactory returns on investment rather than rat infestations. But the consequences are equally perverse.
In order to boost campaign performance, digital advertisers have set a raft of targets. However, worryingly, an increasing proportion of these metrics are short-term – such as cost per visit or cost per sale.
Peter Field’s most recent analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Databank has found that the proportion of entries with a short-term goal has risen from 7% in 2006 to 33% in 2014.
At first, these campaigns appear successful as campaigns are optimised: more budgets go to the best performers, while the worst are struck off the plan. But the success is illusory.
Les Binet and Peter Field showed in “The Long and Short of It”, their earlier analysis of the IPA Effectiveness database, that what works best in the short term isn’t ideal in the long term.
The solution? The introduction of more nuanced targets. Every digital campaign needs to complement short-term tracking with analysis of how longer term brand metrics have been affected. The costs for exposed versus control have dropped far enough now that this aim is feasible.
Unless we do that we’ll continue to deliver tails, not rats.
Richard Shotton is head of insight at Zenith – follow him on Twitter: @rshotton
