The Case for Online Branding – Taking Measure of the Metrics

By: Scott Knoll

The truth behind the axiom “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” resonates with brands and marketers everywhere.  In an industry that spends approximately $446 Billion on advertising per year, measuring the effectiveness of the dollars spent is no small matter. While most folks in the online marketing industry would agree that the Web delivers the most measurable ROI of any advertising medium, only about 15% of advertising is spent on the Web, and only a tiny sliver of that is spent on online branding.

Why is this so? For one thing, the Internet remains curiously undervalued as a branding medium.  Geraldine Madeira of Microsoft recently stressed the point by saying that the Internet is still disproportionately used for direct response advertising, even though its capabilities for branding have grown exponentially. Advertising technology has evolved to include social media, rich media, and interactive video, all of which create robust opportunities for building brand awareness and brand loyalty.

I would take this idea one step further. For an industry that has been talking about the value of online measurement for ten plus years, we are still suffering from a startling lack of comprehension about advertising analytics that go beyond direct response. Marketers continue to measure ROI through the narrow lens of static metrics. Direct marketers want to achieve clicks, signups, or instant sales.  However these are inadequate metrics for brand advertisers, who strive to achieve awareness, interest and intent. These are dynamic and fluid concepts that don’t fit the standard Web analytics model. Gauging branding by direct metrics is like using a slide rule to measure the velocity of a wave. This is the primary reason that brand advertising hasn’t migrated to the web en mass, despite the increasing amount of time people spend on the web every day.

The perception of online measurement simply needs a rethink, especially when it comes to branding. Audience insights gained through business intelligence post-campaign are very powerful and can inform marketing strategy for both branding and direct response advertisers alike. To get the most value from online branding, marketers should be asking:

• Am I reaching the audience I am paying for?
• Who has seen my ad and how often?
• How has my message or creative resonated with my target audience?
• Are there new segments of the population who I should be targeting with my message?

We are witnessing a transitional period in the online advertising industry. Today, emerging audience measurement technologies exist that rival offline metrics for providing deeper insight into customers. Advertisers are no longer simply buying media on Web sites to reach a particular audience; they are using behavioral and audience data to learn more about their customers.

To get better at branding on the web, we need to use tools that are designed to provide valuable insights into the user behind the browser. This is a clear migration towards better leveraging the plethora of data that differentiates the Internet from any other form of media. Until marketers can quickly and accurately measure the actual audience who is exposed to their advertisements with a standard 3^rd party data set, the Internet will never reach its true potential as a mature advertising medium.