A new partnership between Yahoo! and a small Wilton, CT firm aims to bring marketers the holy grail of advertising: exact knowledge of the extent to which advertising affects sales. The giant Web
portal has employed Aegis Group's Marketing Management Analytics, a research firm that employs econometrics analysis, to measure the effectiveness of advertising. Econometrics is branch of economics
that uses complicated mathematical calculations to measure the relationship between different events. The company is able to weigh myriad factors such as weather, price cuts and advertising quality in
determining how sales are affected. Under the agreement, advertisers will pay extra for the service. Thus far, Internet marketers have had to rely on services like Nielsen/NetRatings that compile
audience ratings, but they've always wanted to know how their efforts affect offline activity. Still, this is not the first service to do this--comScore, for example, has something similar--but
offline accountability will be key to the industry's future growth.
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