With a digital industry very focused
on what happens after someone clicks on a banner - knowing exactly
where a person interacted, what he or she looked at, what he or she
bought and how much money we made out of that transaction, the
effect of the 99.9% of all banners that don't get clicked
on has been largely overlooked.
We all know deep down that these
exposures contribute not only to the brand but also to the actual
performance of that famous 'last click' - but by how much?
If we can't set a value on this
contribution or the ad effect, we can't really include this in our
planning and budget, which is not only unfair because some digital
media are just way better at closing the deal, serving that last
impression that the user clicks on. It also limits us in reaching
the full potential of digital advertising.
This actually highlights two different
challenges, of which I'll mainly focus on the second one:
- Brand tracking: How does the exposure to
an online ad change the awareness level, purchase intent or even
the attitudes towards the brand in question?
- Path to Conversion tracking: When looking
back from that last action of the online consumer (buying a product
or some other quantifiable action), knowing that this process is
rarely a linear process, how did the various advertising messages
actually contribute to this action?
Brand tracking has
been covered extensively, but really works in a similar fashion to
how you evaluate other media- the main exception being that in this
case we actually know if the person we're asking has
actually seen the advertising, due to our digital tracking.
The key benefit is that brand tracking
allows us to compare online performance to other media channels. We
can look at the cost of e.g. generating awareness in the target
audience, but more importantly it gives us the real "brand
metrics value" of media, beyond the CPM rate or cost. This
effectively allows us to compare the value of a homepage takeover
to that of a video pre-roll for the client, benchmarking both of
them against the campaign objective.
Path to conversion (P2C)
tracking is really a game changer when looking at the
allocation of budgets across digital channels. While most CPA deals
focus entirely on the last click that delivers the action, looking
back allows us to identify and quantify the exposures that assisted
in generating this action.
This has three major implications:
- Appraising the value of "owned"
channels. This allows us to put a value on the visit to an
advertisers' own homepage or the newsletters an advertiser sends
out if a consumer has been exposed to them. This information can be
used to optimise content of the channels to where the user is at in
the "sales funnel" both with regards to timing and entry/exit
pages.
- Widening the sales
funnel. Tracking P2C as well as pinpointing "sales
closers" identifies critical "sales openers" : digital channels,
sites or formats that drive initial interest and assist in
generating volume. In telecommunications e.g., if you don't
communicate that you have the latest smartphones (something which
doesn't have a high direct ROI), you're missing out when the
consumer narrows down his or her search and starts searching for a
specific device and a contract, which means you lose potential
sales volume.
- Re-allocation of
budgets. In practice, the ROI term should be relabeled
"total funnel ROI", to include both of the above mentioned points.
This considers how much you pay for media (placements and formats),
but also for search (notoriously a good "sales closer", but less so
at generating interest) and even how much you put into you own
channels (email, website etc.)
There's no doubt that the amount of
information makes this a very complex topic. But it also highlights
why working with digital media is entering a new era, where the
real value doesn't only lie in buying or selling media space, but
in applying the data and the knowledge that we gather.
Even more interesting is the potential
of P2C tracking in a world where most of our media consumption will
eventually take place on "adserved media" - digital TV, mobile,
online - which allows us to track and optimise across media, and
not only assuming who might have seen a TV spot.
Christian can be contacted at christian.godske@mediacom.dk
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Image: AdForm.com
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