Commentary
How Advanced Connectivity Will Revolutionize Measurement & Optimization
- by Anto Chittilappilly , Op-Ed Contributor, October 14, 2014
Now we’re entering a new era in which ordinary objects can be connected to the Internet using sensors and controllers. Such advanced connectivity, often referred to by the buzz phrase “Internet of Things,” is reshaping the way consumers interact with brands, and vice versa.
For marketers, it’s opening up a host of new opportunities to deliver omnichannel experiences that engage consumers in the right place, at the right time and with the right message. For instance, since wearable devices are aware of location and context, marketers can target individuals with relevant content or promotions based on where they are and what they’re doing. After a workout, for example, an individual might find an ad for a pair of sneakers on his/her smart watch, or a consumer could receive a specific coupon or offer based on his/her location in a shopping mall. Moreover, marketers can design these promotions so that individuals can easily share them via their social networks, helping to amplify the brand and extend its reach.
Revolutionizing Measurement & Optimization
So how will advanced connectivity impact marketing measurement and optimization? Since wearable tech and other Internet-connected objects act like laptops, smartphones and tablets, brands will be able to incentivize consumers to identify and share information about themselves through sign-on environments and branded apps. This will enable marketers to directly connect all of the media touchpoints to which an individual was exposed – from initial awareness through to the final conversion – for a holistic view of each customer and his/her interactions with a brand.
Combining this end-to-end view of each customer’s journey with advanced measurement technology will enable marketers to precisely quantify the impact that every touchpoint experienced by every individual has on their overall marketing performance – and move away from the trappings of last-click based measurement and inaccurate metrics that only include a portion of the entire customer journey. By mitigating the cookie limitations with cross-device tracking, advanced attribution technologies enable marketers to accurately measure and optimize performance based on actual people, rather than cookies.
As more and more objects and devices connect to the Internet, the potential for marketers is huge. And by ditching antiquated measurement techniques for more advanced methods, they stand to gain substantially. With a holistic view of the customer journey and how combinations of channels, campaigns and tactics influence purchases and other conversions, marketers will be able to make more informed decisions about where to spend their media budgets, and realize the omnichannel vision of reaching consumers with the right message at the right time and place.
Interesting article Anto. But I believe that you have missed one critical word out of your key sentence "Combining this end-to-end view of each customer’s journey with advanced measurement technology will enable marketers to precisely quantify the impact that every touchpoint experienced by every individual has on their overall marketing performance...". I believe it should say (one word added in capitals) "Combining this end-to-end view of each customer’s journey with advanced measurement technology will enable marketers to precisely quantify the impact that every touchpoint experienced by every individual DEVICE has on their overall marketing performance...". How do you propose to measure and monitor the individual PERSON? Isn't it possible that all this programmatic optimised contact would mean that at the same instant as I walk through the mall triggering some GPS or NFS threshold, that my Google glasses pop information up in my eye-line at the same time as my smartphone buzzes while the ad is also reaching my tablet in my briefcase all while my Fitbit starts alerting me as well, simply because there is no over-arching 'knowledge system' of the "who" behind the device?
Hopefully advanced connectivity will do more than enable more and more junk to flow through commerce and trade, but more products (goods and services) that have really value to the consumer and to society. We have 21st century technology sitting on top of systems that drive enviro socio economic development in ways that are more suited to the 18th and 19th century than now. There were 1.7 billion people on the planet in 1900. Now there are about 7.1 billion people. The big question is how to enable people so that they are able to get more out of life in ways that a positive for society and the environment. It's high time we started to do some thinking that is outside the box!
@Peter: You make a great point. In fact, advertisers are getting hurt more when their hard earned marketing dollars are being spend on something perceived as junk mail or junk advertising. An ad become a junk ad when it reaches the wrong audience. There are technologies out there to help the advertisers to avoid this. For example: Attribution based measurements, planning and activation help advertisers to reduce such waste.
@John: The omission of “Device” is intentional. Companies such as Visual IQ enable advertisers to stitch the touchpoints together of an individual on multiple devices. You can read more about this here. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/228719/cross-device-measurement-new-rules-of-the-road.html