• by February 20, 2001

A new Myers Mediaenomics report indicates that ad executives are commoditizing Internet advertising by using traditional media value systems to evaluate Web ad effectiveness.

The Internet's unique traits - one-to-one marketing capabilities and real-time access to consumers - are overshadowed by other attributes that are shared by other, more established media, the report says. When ad executives use the Internet in ways that mimic mass media usage, they are generally disappointed.

Respondents identified "Driving Traffic to Site," "Branding," and Integrated Marketing/Multimedia Packages" as the top three reasons for using online advertising, but it's clear those reasons are not based on satisfaction with the results. Study results show there is little correlation between the top reasons and satisfaction levels - the above three categories placed first, 22nd (out of 22) and 17th respectively on the satisfaction scale.

Interestingly, an examination of the metrics being used by advertisers to plan and measure their Internet campaigns reveals that the top metric is still Click-Throughs (used by 93% of respondents), followed closely by Ad Impressions (88%), Unique Visitors (80%), Page Views (73%) and Conversion Rates (69%). The report says that the high ranking for ad impressions as a metric "implies a trend towards the commoditization of the Internet and the shift towards mainstream media metrics. Advertisers know that branding has to form an essential part of advertising, but they have not figured out a way to measure it and are unhappy with the way it is currently measured." Email was cited as generating the highest satisfaction score among various forms of online advertising, followed by banners/other rich media, pop-up/daughter windows, "other" and promotions (with registrations). Email was the only form to generate a satisfaction level exceeding 60%.