• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 27, 2012

Before you get the wrong idea, Lenovo Global Marketing Director-Digital Marketing Gary Milner was not alluding to the kind of waste management business that, say a Tony Soprano, might run. He was talking about media waste – the kind that all marketers increasingly are having t deal with – if they want to stay in any kind of business.

Toward that end, Milner said audience measurement and frequency capping are a huge factor now, and going forward in digital marketing.

Citing the poor clickthrough rates of banner ads, and the only slightly better ones of online video ads, Milner said

“Most brands are not managing the frequency,” Milner charged, offering an actual example from Lenovo’s marketing last year.

He said the computer marketer broke a new TV campaign with a six-times frequency (meaning that the target audience was planned to be exposed to the ads six times maximum). He said that same frequency cap was then applied to Lenovo’s digital marketing, which proved to be a big waste.

“We did a test,” he said, adding, “We actually found out that we only needed  to run 2x to get a reaction. What does that mean – two-thirds of our media budget was completely wasted. How do you better manage that?”