• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, November 3, 2009

Brand should be treated as just another attribute along with pricing, convenience, and others, according to Peter Fader, professor of marketing at the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania. He added that brand gets "put on a pedestal" it doesn't deserve. Loren Grossman, chief strategy officer for Rapp digital, disagreed, saying brand encompasses all the other targeting attributes and so should warrants greater consideration.

Dave Helmreich, vice president, Interactive Marketing, TARGUSinfo, sparked the discussion by explaining that measuring brand was actually pretty easy, simply requiring looking at products and services people use offline to target them online. That method delivers about 80% of the audience targeted by a given brand.