Posts Tagged ‘online marketing’

Interactive Musings: Attribution and Engagement Mapping

November 23rd, 2010

QuestionIconI came across a recent Forrester post on Attribution and felt the need to comment…  I’ll be short and to the point!

I agree the concept of attribution is not new but unfortunately there are still many issues that need to be addressed, such as…

1. Ad servers reliance on their tag to be served on the last visit preceding an action. Unless I’m mistaken, ad servers above can only attribute credit for prior engagements if the last click preceding the conversion is goes through their server. Unfortunately most conversions are preceded by visits from direct navigation and/or natural search.  So unless the ad server integrates with site analytics data, they can’t attribute credit for a majority of online conversions.

2. Lack of an agreed upon methodology for recasting the cost per action across the touch-points that played a supporting role. How far back do you go? How many impressions are worth one click? How do you split the credit across different types of media?  We have our views and am sure others have theirs.  And most are probably based on sound logic.

3. Acknowledgment that our ability to measure impact is severely limited by increasing use of multiple devices (work, home, mobile) and cookie deletion. We’ve seen for years that users often browse at work and buy at home.  Now they are relying more and more on their mobile devices for browsing, making it pretty tough to figure out how and where they are becoming engaged and interested in our offer.  For every action we can measure via cookies, there must be 3-4 that we can’t measure.

To sum it up, engagement mapping and attributing credit across touch-points is an important and useful approach.  But it alone will not tell the whole story.  Market testing and surveys should also be included in your toolkit for determining what works in online media.

Related articles and presentations:
Online Demand Generation: Strategy and Metrics
Making Sense of Online Campaign Results: Part 1
Making Sense of Online Campaign Results: Part 2

I hope you find this helpful or at least thought-provoking.  Feel free to share with your colleagues, clients and propellerheads who are into web analytics and media modeling!

Steve Latham
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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Measurement

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Business Case for Social Media

May 8th, 2009

Social media is hot. Everyone’s doing it and everyone wants it. But how many marketers have figured out how to use social media to build their brand and drive revenue? Unfortunately, not nearly enough. I believe one of the hurdles to pursuing social media as a marketing program is the challenge of creating a compelling business case that frees up the resources (budget) needed to fund it.

I recently spoke to a group of business executives about how companies are using (or planning to use) social media, and how to build a business case for it. In my presentation I also included some new data on how the Inc. 500 is using social media, 5 reasons to pursue it, and a methodology for measuring ROI.

You can view the presentation below or find it at slideshare (note: sorry for some of the formatting issues caused by slideshare conversion).

I hope it’s helpful and that you’ll provide some feedback for improving it. And if you have any good data points to support the case, please send them my way!

For more info you can use, view our blog. And for updates follow me on Twitter!

Business Case For Social Media (Revised 2009!) – Steve Latham – Spur Interactive

View more presentations from Steve Latham.

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Posted in Measurement, Our Favorites!, Social Media, Strategy

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Conference Recap – Part 1

July 16th, 2008

If you missed Internet Retailer, AD-Tech, the Internet Ad Bureau conference or Online Marketing Summit, you’re in luck!  Below are some of the highlights and takeaways from the conference.  Feel free to share with your colleagues!

GENERAL STATS:

The Web continues to grow in importance to all of us:

  • Ecommerce will exceed $550bn globally and $200 billion in the U.S. in 2008, still accounts for less than 4% of U.S. retail sales
  • IBM reported that adults spend almost as much time online as they do watching TV: 60% of adults spend 1-4 hours online each day (66% watch 1-4 hours of TV)
  • Teens spend 20% more time online than they do watching television (13 hours / week)

Online advertising remains one of the economy’s fastest growth markets…

  • Digital ad spend is expected to exceed $26bn in 2008 (up 23% from 2007) and $41bn by 2011.
  • Digital now comprises 7.5% of ad spend (up from 5% in 2006).
  • 85% of B2B marketers are increasing online budgets in 2008.
  • GM is shifting 50% of its $3bn ad budget to digital
  • McKinsey reported that by 2010, 2/3 of CMOs expect to spend more than 10% of ad budgets online. 11% expect to spend more than 50% of budgets online. More than 2/3 of respondents believe online media is more efficient than traditional advertising.

Traditional media channels are struggling (Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer)

  • Radio ad spending is expected to contract 3% in 2008
  • Newspaper ad spend is expected to contract 8% in 2008

Many still struggle with online marketing (Chris Vollmer, Booz Allen Hamilton)

  • #1 pain point: inability to measure effectiveness of online efforts
  • Also of note: brands need to improve integration of all activities (creative, media, reporting, analysis).
  • Only 25% of respondents felt they were sufficiently savvy to manage the entire interactive process.

Leaders are taking action to put in place:

  • Metrics and capabilities to assess impact of digital efforts
  • ROI dashboards
  • New positions to coordinate integration of efforts and agency relationships

Leading digital agencies and media companies…

  • Invest to help marketers “get it”
  • Link metrics to marketer brand/business objectives
  • Don’t just sell ad space – they sell solutions
  • Turn Consumer Insight to Marketer Foresight

Trends

  • The line between “above the line” and “below the line” is becoming blurred.
  • The need for accountability and an increase in younger CMO’s will drive digital. Of all media channels, TV may get hurt the most.

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