• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 12, 2005

CHICAGO -- To truly compete with television, the interactive industry should develop its own measurement system, comparable to the Nielsen ratings, Ted McConnell, Procter & Gamble's manager of interactive marketing and innovation, told the audience Monday at Ad:Tech in Chicago.

McConnell said the proportion of ad budgets spent on Web advertising -- just 3.7 percent last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau -- remains small because the Web, unlike TV, has no generally accepted measurement system. On the contrary, he said, new online products seem to go hand-in-hand with new measurements -- a state of affairs he likened to cars being produced without uniform speedometers.

The answer, he said, is to develop a system like the Nielsen ratings. Despite the Nielsens' shortcomings, McConnell praised the system for being reliable. "It's measuring the same thing time after time after time," he said during the morning keynote address.

"Why haven't we gotten a measure like this for interactive?" he asked. "We keep acting like the competition is us, but really it's traditional media," he said, adding that media buyers take comfort in Nielsen's perceived reliability.

Chrysler's Jeff Bell, who joined McConnell in delivering the opening address, added that marketing online requires ads that can both create awareness of products while also giving consumers practical information they need to make purchases -- such as locations of dealerships. "A banner advertisement that simply tries to say, 'We're here,' isn't good enough," said Bell, vice president of Chrysler and Jeep.

Bell added that marketers should eschew casting a wide demographical net in favor of aiming for specific audiences. "To get more bang for the buck, we have to move to lifestyle and psychographics," Bell said.