• by Tom Hespos , December 6, 2005

It's nearly 2006 and we still have yet to figure out the reach and frequency thing online. We have a couple of predictive modeling tools, but they fail to take into consideration site placements or targeting. We also have reach and frequency information coming from ad servers after campaigns run, but that information lacks demographics. It's been a dozen years since the first paid Web ads started running, and we still don't have online reach and frequency nailed.

It makes me wonder whether we should bother finishing the job. I don't want to diminish the contributions of the various players who have pushed this industry initiative closer to the goal line year after year, but forcing online media to conform to outdated success metrics predicated on the broadcast model will sell our medium short.

If we play broadcast's game, we will lose. I will not count the notion of reaching as many people as possible with a broadcast message among the Internet's strengths. But when we conform to reach and frequency metrics, we're positioning the medium against television and radio in such a way as to fail to play to our own strengths. Interactive, as the name implies, is strong in its ability to interact with people, not broadcast to them.

Instead of making interactive play to broadcast's strengths, perhaps we should turn the tables a bit. Maybe we should force broadcast to account for the engagements it spawns, conversations it starts and influence it has over word of mouth. What? It can't measure that? My point exactly...

I'll concede that there are advertisers out there who need to have reach and frequency metrics at their fingertips for the purposes of gauging the percentage of their target audience that they're communicating a message to. For those clients who require it, we may want to have it handy. But I would argue that for the marketing community to wean itself off the broadcast model, we can't continue to measure online with broadcast's metrics. Instead of following the leader, we need to lead the way with our own metrics that showcase interactive's strengths.