Interactive Media Education: Value of the View-Through

In the last couple of weeks, I have talked to agencies and clients alike about the value of how Microsoft's Atlas utilizes Engagement Mapping and MediaPlex' MOJO utilizes Path to Conversion. Both products are fantastic, and they help you establish the number of online touch points it takes from start to finish of a conversion cycle (among many other things of course). But when I try and talk to people about it in "plain English", I find myself referencing View-Through Data - which seems to instantly draw a red flag.

For those of you relatively new to the industry, it might not conjure up negative connotations, but for those of you that have been in interactive media for a few years, it probably takes you back to the early days of publishers claiming credit for everything. A great example is when you are running ads on an ad network like Advertising.com that has approx. 90% internet market penetration, and at the same time you are running ads on a search engine. When an ad is displayed by advertising.com, a cookie is instantly set and when the conversion happens, that cookie pings the ad server letting it know a conversion has happened. If the ad was only served, and not clicked on - it is considered a view-through conversion. The problem is, the last click may have occurred on the search engine you were running on, and now your publisher (advertising.com) is taking claim for a conversion and your search engine is taking claim for a conversion - but you only have one conversion. So naturally, the view through got discounted in the past and was instantly labeled a black sheep.

Jumping at least 14 years ahead (FYI - Internet years are the equivalent of dog years), the view through still has a negative connotation, and when I speak to people about it now - they immediate stop me and say "oh no - I'm not paying for view through conversions again!" The reality is - a view through is just another metric that helps me do my job better. If we know that 12 people viewed your ad on Yahoo and eventually converted on a google search term - then we know our ads were targeting the correct people - but the offer just didn't immediately resonate to the "buy" mode. That being said, we have started to compile frequency data through the help of our ad servers that let us know exactly how many view-through's or touch points it takes our clients to convert an offer.

Imagine if you knew that it took your ad being displayed 12 times before someone actually purchased your product or service. You could tweak your messaging and work to get that down to 6 times, and essentially cut your advertising costs in half. Then imagine if you were able to insert an offline ad right after your first touchpoint... Imagine what your media mix could do if it all worked together seamlessly!

So before you cringe when I talk about view-through's... Just know that like everything, the view-through has evolved as well, and its making our job of defining the media mix all that much more enjoyable.

Media Two Interactive joins SEMPO

Media Two Interactive is now a Circle Member of SEMPO... In our never ending quest to stay on top of everything search and how it plays well together in the media mix, we have joined the leading professional Search Engine Marketers organization. Coupled with our IAB membership and search committee participation as well as our corporate certification with Google, Media Two is in the enviable position of being able to help define the search engine industry and how it affects the online and offline marketing universe.

Although this is starting to sound more like a press release than a blog post - I really just wanted to keep everyone in the loop of our continued drive to not only educate but to be educated. Too often people put search in a vacuum and assume nothing else matters - when the reality is, there are online and offline events that happen every day that shape the way people think, and ultimately search. Media Two published a case study about a year or so ago that talked about how display advertising can lift your search conversions by over 20% (go to http://www.mediatwo.net/mediatwo-casestudies.html#/Case%20Studies/ and read the one titled "Increase SEM Results"), and just recently, Microsoft Advertising's Atlas division posted a very similar case study for Alltel.

Search is being looked at in all new lights, and there are more and more opportunities for companies that continue to grow and learn - and I'm proud to say Media Two continues to strive to be a leader in the Interactive Media industry with it's dedication to Search Engine Marketing.

Peter Shankman, Internet Summit and IAB Q3 Revenue Report

Needless to say, it has been a whirlwind 7 day period in which plenty of things are going on in the interactive world. If you want to ask about my family’s personal tour of the White House we received during the G20 Summit last weekend – then we’re REALLY talking about a whirlwind week (I got to pet Barney without getting bit)! But back to interactive… Peter Shankman was in Raleigh speaking at the TIMA event – and if you have never seen him speak, or don’t follow him on Twitter – or really just don’t know anything about what he’s about – you’re missing out. He’s filled with plenty of stories – and filled with plenty of thoughts and ideas on where the social media/interactive world is going. I’d like to say he speaks with a lot of common sense, but driving 150 miles for a Hardee’s burger pretty much throws that out the window. That being said – he is in tune with modern day technology, and he is well connected and should be followed, tweeted, LinkedIn, etc…

This week was also the inaugural Internet Summit in Chapel Hill… I am happy to say, interactive finally has a major following in the Triangle! The event was sold out (estimated 700+ attendee’s) – and from what I could tell – a smashing success. Bob Young of LuLu and Red Hat fame spoke about how they’re a good company – but should be great if they can get their hands around everything new in interactive. Gian Fulgoni from comScore spoke about online lifts to the offline world. There were plenty of social media “experts” and what seemed to be even more legal folks in attendance. All-in-all – it was an impressive summit and one of the first that I’ve attended that I felt like I actually took more away from it than I paid for. Congrats to the group at CED and Tech Journal for pulling this all off.

And to cap off the week – in this horrible economy we’re in – the Q3 numbers were released by the IAB (which – shameless plug – Media Two is one of only 13 Associate Agency Members) and interactive grew by 11% to a tune of $5.9 Billion last quarter. No – it’s not the 20+ percent we’ve grown accustomed to, but I think you’ll all agree that showing some growth is still a positive. Lot’s going on at Media Two – so more to come, but I have a goal of getting a Twitter account this month. I’ve spoken about it, explained it, followed the phenom (including the latest Motrin/MommyBloggers) – and I think it’s about time I actually joined. Have a good one.

A Winning Online Strategy

“It was like the central nervous system of the campaign," said Julie Germany, the director of the Institute for Politics Democracy and the Internet at the George Washington University, today in the Times Online. She is commenting on the impact that Obama's online campaign and web tactics had on his election on Tuesday. The statement bears a striking similarity to our agency's mantra - let digital drive!

Personal politics aside, what the Obama strategists conceived, launched, analyzed and worked in their favor up until the 11th hour on Tuesday was remarkable and should significantly advance the ways which all marketers alike use the internet to drive their own brand's media mix. Ironically, it was in fact the strategic and sophisticated approach to grow and organize a community online and offline, that made a key difference in the overall success of his campaign - the value of which was lost on the GOP. This approach to online media inspired me as a consumer of all things digital and an online media enthusiast! Their work and results will be studied and will set new benchmarks for what is possible online - not just in a political race. I sincerely hope that our clients will allow us to work with their teams, to create a sophisticated, measured movement of their own.

I recognize that a campaign with the objective to elect a candidate for president is unique and that our clients have business that hold them to different returns. But when I break this down to simple campaign stats and ignore the product or service variable, most of our clients would drool over these returns (and that budget!):

Spend: $600,000,000 total for both online and offline media
Conversions: 3,000,000 new customers in the proprietary online database
Cost Per Acquisition: ~$20 overall (and this doesn't factor the following numbers)

Additionally:
- undeclared amount of mobile phone numbers and permission to re-market
- 1.5M + participants in branded online community network
- approximately 3M Facebook supporters joined branded profile page
- 867,000 friends on MySpace page
- 128,000 subscribers for branded YouTube page and nearly 20,000,000 channel views
- 120,000 Twitter followers
- undeclared numbers of volunteers and brand evangelists

Those are jaw dropping returns! If you're curious about where the money was spent (for online only) you can study their media plan here. The media plan itself was not revolutionary, but what I hope our clients and all marketers take note of, is how the campaign was about a brand who worked tirelessly to appear to service their "customers" so much so that the customers were motivated to serve the brand in return.

And isn't that what marketing aims to achieve?

Take aways:

* With smart strategists at the wheel, digital media should drive the entire marketing mix

* Invest in your campaign's destination site and invest in the tools that you provide there for your customers to become a part of your brand and expand your brand to their own network

* Unify the brand's creative and measure every tactic, make each accountable to the entire campaign's end goal

* Collect customer data reasonably and make sure it's useful to the brand's future initiatives

* Create! Motivate! Serve your customers well and enjoy the results!

Congratulations President Obama!

I voted for McCain.

I think the better man for the job actually won the election, but I found a lot of things annoying about this election that didn’t seem to bother me in the past. Thankfully – we have a company blog that the company doesn’t back – but they don’t frown upon us voicing our opinion. So here are my top annoyances with this election:

1. Roughly 1% of McCain’s votes were from African American’s (stat I saw on TV – so who knows if that’s accurate or not). Before you label me a racist, please refer back to my statement that “I think the better man for the job won”. What concerns me is that this was a black/white vote – and not a vote about the principles. That being said, Obama was a good choice, so it worked out that we got the right person and had a historic first in our country – but hopefully this will be the last vote that we do black/white.
2. I was able to vote party-line without even looking at the candidates. So if this election weren’t a black and white vote – it would have been a Republican/Democratic vote. In reality – is that any better? How about doing away with that little box and actually making people fill in the circles.
3. And the best for last… My biggest annoyance… The marketers. I know! In my world, everything is about marketing. It is so important – and yet, I have never been more annoyed. I again heard on the radio that the combined marketing dollars spent by the 2 presidential candidates totaled $1 billion this year! Are you kidding me??? I love marketing, and it has it’s place, but with everyone talking about a horrible economy – you can only imagine what could have been done with that money.

So here’s a thought… How about the next election – we ban the candidates from marketing or advertising. Instead, we have one government website that allows the candidates to post where they stand on the major principles, shows their history of voting and so on. No political affiliation can be listed, only principles. For those people that don’t have access to a computer or the internet, they can submit a special request and the candidates will pitch in and send them one (for a billion dollars – they can probably send a few). This way the independent party will also be on a level playing field. One month before elections, they will hold 2 debates a week based on the most pressing issues that are submitted to this web site. I’m just scratching at the surface – but you get my point. There is $1 billion that just went to some marketing people and disappeared. We didn’t create more long term jobs, build any more cars, cure cancer… We apparently got a new President that has such a cool name even my 5-year-old wanted me to vote for him… Hopefully that will be enough.