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| Changing Media Metrics: Measuring Relevancy and Effectiveness |
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| Monday, 08 October 2007 | |
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A comment by Neal M. Burns Advertising Department The University of Texas at Austin Looking at the cost for planning and executing an experiential campaign - as well as new media opportunities has stimulated discussion and concern about appropriate costs and benefits delivered. (It may be helpful in the discussion that follows to consider that at one time all media was new.) I wanted to talk - even re-visit some of our earlier discussion on this topic. It's a bit long - as Winston Churchill once said - with more time I could have made it shorter.  As those of us in advertising and marketing explore, begin to understand and use media and message processes generally called new or "alternative" - in that they are different than the traditional electronic, print and out-of home that have characterized the business for the past 125 years - we struggle to develop an appropriate analysis. What should serve as the metric that helps us compare advertiser's purchases in these new media with traditional media expenditures? And, which measures are simply cost indices and which are measures of effectiveness? In a profession in which decisions the past were built upon cost per thousand (CPT or CPM), cost per point (CPP) and the challenges of ROI and share fight what should the operative criteria for new media and experiential advertising expenditures be? Understanding the importance disruptive media break-through can bring and the effectiveness it possesses in building brand trial and loyalty can be easily misunderstood because of comparisons to traditional media costs. Television (network, spot and cable) and radio (network and spot) advertising costs are typically measured in cpp (cost per rating point); newspaper and magazine advertising costs are more often measured in CPM (cost per thousand). Yet, at best these are cost indices rather than measures of effectiveness. In an era of audit and measurement, where clients demand that agencies produce evidence of a return on investment (ROI) for the dollars invested in reaching their desired audience, experiential campaigns excel in terms of what they deliver. For new media - like the Internet , experiential brand encounters, events or in-place advertisement - the size of the universe from which to compute these indicia is a hotly debated question. Is it the number of people with computers and modems? Number of passers-by? Is the issue one of how many people have the possibility of seeing an ad in a retail establishment? Clearly, if one changes estimates of the size of these universes one also changes the cost index that results. Existing CPM indices vary, depending on audience delivered; print, for example, may vary from $5 to over $200 CPM depending on selectivity of audience and total circulation. Television now also has comparable pricing variation depending upon the selectivity of the audience attracted by content.  Leaders in the media planning and evaluation business recognize the importance of new media and appropriate evaluation. Recently, Initiative North America CEO Richard Beaven commented at the Advertising Week Conference on new media delivery that "Change isn't going to slow down." Starcom MediaVest executive Laura Desmond forecasts that soon perhaps 60% of clients' budgets will be set aside for what is now called "new media" (does that include experiential?) Equally important will be the impact on traditional media of the access that Google has given its advertising clients to determining the effectiveness of their ad plays. Being able to know if the intended audience has seen a message and determining if it is "working" has always been a major driver of media selection. In the absence of effectiveness measures cost indices served as a fall back basis for the plan. New media and new measures will quickly gain the participation of major advertisers and media buying organizations.Existing media purchasing practices as well as the measures used to justify financial decisions simply no longer apply. Even the traditional annual plan and associated commitment is clearly an anachronism . The old rules are obsolete and universities, agencies and clients are all learning to adapt. As Jay Friedman has pointed out, "what seems organized and efficient for marketers does not necessarily line up with consumer media consumption or usage patterns. Think about planning a six-week flight for a soap brand? Personally, I use soap each and every day." In a digital world our inventory of ad space is easily expanded, production and insertion readily accomplished and both sales and traffic to the web site are increased. Some Good References
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