What's to Come

Finding the Cause and Effect in Advertising

Today there was an article in the Media & Marketing section of the Wall Street Journal about the AAAA conference in Orlando by Brian Steinberg. Media Buyers Fly Down to Business It talked about changes in the focus of media buyers and advertisers toward "new digital technologies that are fragmenting audiences and forcing advertisers to find new ways to market their products". It spoke to the trend of media buyers putting more resources into various techniques to measure the effectiveness of advertising. It quotes Jim Poh, VP and Director of creative content distribution for Crispin Porter + Bogusky: "It's more and more important because more and more advertisers are questioning what their advertising is doing for them". And it quotes Charlie Rutman, chief executive of Havas's MPG North America as saying "The overarching goal is to try to find the cause-and-effect relationship between a marketing act and some kind of consumer action". Like I said in earlier posts, this is more and more about measurable R.O.I. Advertisers are demanding to know what their ad dollars are doing for their sales. But, as Mr. Poh points out, the deluge of data that can be brought forward doesn't necessarily prove that their advertising works.

It seems there are challenges in not only the measurement, but the use of the data that comes out of the measurement. The ability to measure more accurately what was served and the conditions under which it was served will continue to increase, but the connection with the consumer action is still more difficult. One would think that with all of the point-of-sale information that is collected by everyone, it would be easier to make this connection. A step in the right direction has been made through Internet ads and online buying. Television and mobile still have a ways to go to create this connection.

posted by Andy Huckaba @ 12:03 PM