Traditional Media Advertising On the Ropes?
Chicago Ad Man
Amid growing skepticism about the effectiveness of traditional media
advertising, a committee from three important industry organizations is
pushing a new way to measure how consumers interact with ads.
A joint-task force composed of members of the Association of National
Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies and the
Advertising Research Foundation yesterday unveiled an initiative that
would shake up the classic equation of advertising math that determines
consumer exposure to an ad. It would replace the concept of frequency
-- the number of exposures to an ad -- with "engagement," a metric
that could better reflect the growing number of media choices facing
consumers, from cell phones and the Internet to video games and
podcasts.
Consumers control access
"There is so much media now that consumers control access," said
Robert DeSena, director of relationship marketing at Masterfoods USA.
"It's much more about finding a way to talk to them as
individuals."
The initiative, dubbed MI4, was rolled out at an ANA conference on
marketing accountability that happened as the marketing world goes
through a sea change wrought by the ever-growing list of new
technologies that is changing on a daily basis how people consume media
and, consequently, how they receive commercial messages. Against that
backdrop, marketers are more often demanding ways to monitor return on
their marketing investments.
In this year's cable upfront, two networks, Court TV and the Weather
Channel, struck deals that were based on viewer engagement and recall.
At the ANA conference, Kate Sirkin, executive vice president and global
research director at Starcom MediaVest Group, said partnerships with
media sellers is vital. The adoption of engagement as a metric, she
said, is "something that is going to be done as a partnership."
A consensus on engagement
While the committee was united in backing the new metric, there was far
from a consensus on what, exactly, engagement is. "The issue is
whether we can agree on what engagement is, knowing that's the hard
part," said Norman Lehoullier, managing director at Grey Interactive.
Said Mr. DeSena, "Engagement has a psychological component, but it
will manifest behaviorally -- it will lead to an action."
The committee's initial tasks are to define engagement and propose a
large-scale research effort to validate it as a planning, tracking and
return on investment metric, said Joseph Plummer, chief research
officer at the ARF.
Intention and action
A study unveiled at the conference highlighted the gap between
intention and action when it comes to determining ROI. A study
conducted by Marketing Management Analytics, the ANA, and Forrester
Research found that 60% of marketers polled said that defining,
measuring and acting on ROI is important. But only about 20% were
satisfied with their efforts to do so.