Josh Bourne ⬥ 23 December
I recently received an email from the comScore mailing list that was penned to explain the “right measures of advertising effectiveness.” According to the email, the value of ad placement should be measured by the views it garners, not just the clicks; after all, the fact that an Internet user sees an ad (even if he or she does not click on it) adds value to the marketing campaign. The following was written by Gian Fulgon Chairman and co-Founder comScore, Inc.:
Failure to recognize that exposure to the ad has measurable benefits in terms of consumer awareness and behavior—even without a click-thru—can lead advertisers and publishers to significantly undervalue display advertising. As a result, use of the click alone to evaluate the effectiveness of display advertising could be one of the main reasons why display ad dollars are under pressure.
Needless to say, it’s critical that advertisers and publishers use the right metrics. They need to use view-thru metrics not clicks. comScore recently published a norms database based on our analysis of the view-thru impact of hundreds of display ad campaigns. These studies should prove to advertisers that display ad campaigns are delivering real value in terms of substantial lift in site visitation (+46%), lift in trademark search queries (+38%) and increases in both e-commerce (+27%) and offline sales (+17%).
Back in April, after a Wall Street Journal article reported on discrepancies between Google click data and comScore’s estimates of that data, we pointed out that despite the negative reaction to these inaccuracies, the inaccuracies are indicative of the imperfect science of Internet tracking and should be expected. We also noted that the only way to employ quantitative data on Internet trends is to be able to look beyond the numbers with a qualitative understanding of Internet usage and consumer behavior. This “view-thru” impact idea is working off of the knowledge that hard numbers are only one piece of the puzzle.
Tags: comScore, consumer behavior, display advertising, Gian Fulgon, Google, Internet, marketing, marketing campaign, qualitative understanding, quantitative data, view-thru metrics, Wall Street Journal