Measurement and Metrics : The Debate Rages On
Measurement and Metrics. Should you measure? Should you not measure? And if you measure, should you refer to the result of your measurements as metrics? some argument, instead we saw a very harmonious discussion of the challenges of measurement and the implications of data in our very ROI driven business.
Rick Bruner, Director of Research and Industry Relations at Doubleclick was joined by Young-Bean Song, VP of Analytics at Atlas Institute, Chad Parizman, Director of Online Analytics at Scripps Networks Interactive (home of The Food Network & other television properties), Darren Stoll, Macys.com Director of Marketing Analytics, and John Squire, Sr. VP Product Strategy and GM Search Services at CoreMetrics.
All panelists agreed that one of the biggest challenges they currently face is how to “go beyond the last ad seen.” When you begin looking at all the touch points of your campaign instead of the last point leading to an ultimate conversion point - sale, newsletter sign-up etc - you begin to get a much more nuanced impression of your overall campaign effectiveness. According to Young-Bean Song, Atlas looked at this issue and saw that search-derived visitors who had previously been exposed to display advertising saw a 22% increased likelihood to convert.
Darren Stoll from Macys.com agreed. “Historically, we’ve given the last click credit for sales, but now we see there is a whole chain of events in the customer sales lifecycle.” They are still struggling with this issue, and are now developing a scoring method to help them evaluate the impact on potential future sales from a given marketing opportunity. From personal experience, I know that can be an incredibly complex venture. To help them consolidate tracking Macys.com requires users to register to use their site and measure their activity from those visitors.
John Squire said that he felt some marketers are in too much of a hurry to search for the brand new homerun campaign rather than taking the time to optimize their existing programs properly (more of that GMOOT effect that Geoff Ramsey mentioned yesterday).
Young-Bean Song took the contrarian position (here comes the debate) that view-through conversions are “just not a measure of direct response.” View-throughs, where a visitor who as been exposed to an ad later, but not immediately, converts was likened to attributing beer sales at a baseball stadium to the beer banner in the outfield. Instead, Song feels view through statistics would be better used as a measure of media placement quality.
When asked what is missing from the current measurement equation, Chad Parizman of Scripps Networks answered “Talent.” “Finding people who can make sense of the numbers is a big challenge right now.” Song identified lack of a de-duping process from groups involved in multiple CPA (cost per acquisition) deals across many ad networks leads to potentially significant overpayment.
I was hoping that they’d address the recent comScore report on cookie deletion, and one audience member did ask about the impact of cookie deletion on their metrics. Song offered that from their studies “your conversion counts are understated by at least 12-15% right now.” According to their numbers 12% of visitors reject 3rd party cookies immediately, and another 10% will delete them within a week. The effect of this is that your reach will be overstated significantly, your frequency will be understated, and your conversion rates will be artificially lower.
