Measurable Online Marketing Service for CPGs

  • by July 22, 2003
ACNielsen and Yahoo! have launched a new service that enables consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies to reach consumers more effectively online and directly measure the offline sales impact of such efforts. The new service, Yahoo! Consumer Direct, leverages each company's areas of expertise to deliver an improved return on investment (ROI) for CPG marketers.

According to Kathy Riordan, vice president of E-Commerce for Kraft Foods North America, "Linking online media to offline sales is a strategic imperative for Kraft, and Consumer Direct advances our ability to realize this goal. We were pleased to be involved in the earliest stages of this groundbreaking work."

Michael Moore, director, Purina Interactive, for Nestle Purina PetCare Company in St. Louis, said, "The conventional wisdom has been that the Internet is not an effective marketing tool for consumer packaged goods companies, but Consumer Direct turns that conventional wisdom on its head. We are very excited about the results we have achieved so far and look forward to expanding our use of this approach in the near future."

Consumer Direct follows an "identify, communicate, evaluate" process. Members of the 61,500-household ACNielsen Homescan® consumer panel have chosen to participate in the program, granting permission to allow their offline purchasing to be analyzed in conjunction with their activity on the Yahoo! network. Yahoo! and ACNielsen then use learnings from the Homescan panelists to find groups with similar demonstrated interest trends among Yahoo!'s millions of monthly visitors. The Consumer Direct team then works with CPG clients to communicate to those consumers via customized online media campaigns, using a range of solutions from Yahoo!'s media and promotion suite. Lastly, the ACNielsen Homescan panel is used to evaluate the campaigns' ROI, including metrics around the impact on retail sales, brand loyalty, and more.

Philippe Harousseau, Unilever director of Relationship Marketing Innovation Center, said, "We see Consumer Direct as a real opportunity to measure the sales impact of our online activities in a more meaningful way and gain a better understanding of online communications initiatives. We're thrilled to be piloting this initiative with ACNielsen and Yahoo!"

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