New Metric Marries Brand Awareness and Purchase Behavior
- by Ken Liebeskind , June 14, 2002
In the past, online surveys have determined lifts in brand awareness and similar metrics without linking them to sales data. The new tool, called Brand Optics, "closes the loop and lets you put a dollar value on the impact of a campaign," says Clark Kokich, president of Avenue A.
The tool will marry two sets of anonymous data--SuiteSmart's survey results and Avenue A's cookie data to link purchases made by survey participants with the attitudinal changes generated by the ads.
Survey participants include users exposed to Avenue A's ads and others who weren't. Surveys that appear on sites where the ads appeared or client sites ask questions relating to attitude awareness and purchasing intent. The cookie data tracks participant visits to the same sites for a few months after exposure to the ad and determines whether purchases were made at the sites.
Avenue A traditionally acquires cookie data for its clients, but this is the first time it has combined it with survey data from SuiteSmart. SuiteSmart is a two-year-old company that performs online surveys for agencies and advertisers.
The new tool may be an important one in that it claims to expand online analytics. "It bridges the gap between survey research and actual online purchases, helping marketers quantify the value of their online branding efforts," Kokich says.
"Ever since the boom and bust the focus on analytics has increased," says Scott McKinley, president of SuiteSmart. "This is a great metric." He also says offline forms of advertising don't do the same thing.
Kokich says Avenue A has five clients signed up to use Brand Optics, but he wouldn't name them. It will be used on campaigns they're running this summer. Avenue A will charge between $20,000 and $50,000 for the Brand Optics research, "depending on the size of the campaigns," he says.
