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Advertising Industry

IN TRANSLATION : Weigh the traffic, don't just count it

AdMedia, Apr 1, 2008 by Murray Campbell

In last October's edition of AdMedia I commented that the explosion of online social networking sites, virtual communities and MMOGs presented "amazing new opportunities for media strategists and planners to connect audiences with advertisers".

Russell Brown's critique of online media buying practice in AdMedia's Interactive Bytes column suggests that those opportunities are still in the incubation phase. The charge that media planners are too focused on the volume rather than the value of

viewers or visitors is not new.

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Attempts to sell in more powerful methods of monitoring viewers' engagement with television programmes, or technologically advanced methods of measuring radio audiences, can be a real uphill struggle. Costs can be prohibitive as the price of internationally sourced systems cannot be readily funded by the relatively small local media industry.

The other impediment however seemed to be more of intellectual inertia. The more the established system was entrenched as the currency for buying and charging for media the greater was the reluctance to move way from established principles and benchmarks.

Of course the Web is all about challenging intellectual inertia in any industry and there are many examples on sites such as World Advertising Research Centre (www.warc.com) that describe how the quality of media exposure can be measured beyond the metric of OTS (opportunities to see).

One such paper, boldly called "Changing the Internet Audience Measurement Standard", describes a completely new way of measuring internet audience behaviour: "By combining a low-tech TGI survey with a high-tech user-centric panel measurement and a site-centric electronic measurement system, it allows users to see the surf patterns of a panel of which thousands of target group variables are already known and furthermore the ability to optimise advertisement exposure electronically."

Establishing customised online panels of readers or viewers is not new in this country. But these are typically established by a publisher or broadcaster to help them manage their content and programming rather than primarily as an aid for advertising connection.

To identify which people are in an appropriate frame of mind to respond to particular advertising requires some degree of qualitative insight into the degree of overlap between the positioning of the online site, the advertising message and the audience.

A first step as to how such insights might be developed is set out here in a two-dimensional map that marks out the broad territory of various online sites from escapism fantasy, to discovery/ adventure, knowledge building or information sharing.

From this mapping exercise one would have to question why Reuters advertised on Second Life, and you would not advise an insurance company to advertise on a MMOG site to reach young males needing cover for their new car.

This model can be refined considerably by mapping a client's brand positioning and target audience against a potential array of websites.

For example, if your brand was positioned as assertive, your desired audience was personified as authoritative, and decisive, then www.economist.com would be a productive meeting point between brand and buyer.

Ironically for such a long established newspaper, The Economist represents, more than most other media brands, the opportunity of moving the new media currency from counting the size of an audience to weighing the value of that audience.

- balmain@xtra.co.nz

Advertising Industry

IN TRANSLATION : Weigh the traffic, don't just count it

AdMedia, Apr 1, 2008 by Murray Campbell

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