Priority No. 1: Cross-Media Measurement
If anything will boost Internet advertising into a great leap forward, it's developing a way to measure its impact on cross-media campaigns.
If anything will boost Internet advertising into a great leap forward, it's developing a way to measure its impact on cross-media campaigns.
Some day, it will be possible to track exposure to every ad on TV, radio, and the Internet and to correlate that exposure (among those who opt in) with consumer attitudes and purchase behavior. Then we will know which combination of ads increases sales and how to most cost-effectively schedule advertising across media. In other words, we will know how advertising works.
We’re not there yet. Today, we can only efficiently track ad exposure on the Internet. TV and radio will have to wait until the broadcast spectrum completely gives way to the cable modem.
But in the meantime, there is a crying need for ways to evaluate advertising across media using existing tools. Advertisers want to know which media are most effective for their objectives — and the online advertising industry wants to prove that advertising on the Internet is worthwhile.
Current ways of evaluating cross-media advertising are either prohibitively expensive or aren’t sensitive enough to measure paltry online advertising spending. This makes it hard for advertisers to compare their online and offline media investments.
Developing ways to measure advertising across media is the most important goal the online advertising industry faces this year. It’s not an easy one to meet. To make cross-media measurement a reality, we have to avoid these pitfalls:
Most of the people I talk to at conferences and on discussion lists seem to agree that cross-media measurement is a priority. But it’s complicated, and there are divergent strategies for attacking the problem. The opportunity is enormous; the biggest risk is doing nothing.