• by Jim Meskauskas , October 24, 2002

Last week’s column was about research. I asked whether or not the research that was being produced was solid. I asked what it takes to produce solid research.

Lo and behold! Research is a hot topic now, both in the press and in agency conference rooms.

It is also a very popular form of PR.

What is happening now is that the daily trade press is being filled with bits of research detritus under the guise of “news.” These tidbits contain data from the latest studies done by Any Three Initials Research Corp. for the agency Three, Last, and Names.

And I don’t know about you, gentle readers, but I’m starting to wonder just what, if any, value much of this “research” has.

Take the story from AdAge this week that highlighted the findings from a study done by comScore, MillwardBrown Intelliquest and The Online Publisher’s Association.

"Confirming what many long sensed, a study released today has found that online consumers who feel an affinity for a website's content are much more predisposed to notice and be affected by that website's ads."

Did I miss something? Is this something that needed to be confirmed? Isn't this something that the industry always believed?

In the years I've been planning and placing media, even traditional media, it has been the assumption that relevant environment has the potential to increase one's receptivity to an advertisement. I mean; if I'm trying to reach home office radiologists, I put my ads in "Home Office Radiology Today" magazine. There is nothing new about the concept of environmental affinity with product or service in advertising.

I appreciate that the research done is new to the Web as a medium, but it's been a long-standing practice in media planning to find affinity with advertising and its context.

Is this really research? Check out this major discovery:

"[I]t may be more important for marketers to make online ad placement judgments based on the rate or concentration of audience loyalty, rather than on gross traffic statistics."

Really? Whoda thunk it? Archimedes, eat your heart out!

Forgive me, but the early need and desire for research has gotten out of hand, spawning a cottage industry that is producing mostly cottage cheese rather than useful information.

Does anyone else think that this whole quest for tangible data that proves the effectiveness of the Web as an ad medium has gotten silly?

Nietzsche once wrote: "One seldom commits only one rash act. In the first rash act one always does too much. For just that reason one usually commits a second - and then one does too little." I think we are seeing this in action... only in reverse.

Any of you who've read anything I've posted (or published) before will know that I am not anti-research. I do, however, find a difference between research that is done with a foregone conclusion already in hand versus research that tells us something new, insightful, and USEFUL.

Spending time and money to tell us that s--t stinks and death is still this nation's number one killer isn't insightful. Telling me something like “electric green is the color most liked by web surfers between the ages of 18-24 is meaningful and can be put to use.

This other research lacks utility. It is not something I could go into a client meeting with and say, "See! You should spend money online because people are more receptive to ads in environments that they like than they are to ads in environments they don't like." My client would look at me as if I was an idiot if I came to them with something like this because it would show just what kind of contempt I must have for their intelligence.

I am not saying the industry is better off WITHOUT more research. What I am saying is that if research is going to be done, let's direct it towards something that actually means something.

This kind of research does not yield conclusions that have any bearing on actions. If one is already planning and placing this way, as I would imagine any good planner/buyer is, then this research isn’t going to alter their perspectives or cause changes in direction.

Let’s not forget that all the current conventional wisdom that would indicate media planning and placement done in the vein suggested by the comScore/MBI/OPA research is rooted not only in common sense (which in all cases is not always simply a hypothesis; gravity is a good example here), but in experience in advertising in other media.

A VP of marketing who has been working in or with advertising for the last 20 years is going to look at research like this and think, "what a waste of time. I could have told them that."

Unless online is really THAT foreign of a medium that it needs to reinvent all the same wheels that broadcast, print, and other media have been rolling on for decades, it seems that doing this is a waste of valuable resources better allocated to other endeavors.