SAN
FRANCISCO -- Brands demand the promises and the guarantees of performance -- the same performance and fundamental metrics they've come to know in traditional media.
During his keynote at OMMA
Performance Monday, Young-Bean Song, senior director at Microsoft Advertising Institute, told attendees the online industry needs to adopt traditional performance metrics to make brands that
traditionally advertise on television and radio feel more comfortable about moving advertising to the Web.
Data needs to prove the outcome of a campaign -- but that effort has become complex.
During the next few years, companies will bring traditional media metrics to online media plans. The industry also will design new standards for return on investments. Today, the industry talks about
cost per activation and cost per sale, but that will change. Within the next year or two, Microsoft will have the ability to fill in some of the missing data. A company will know it spent $100,000 and
provide a forecast that the media plan will reach about 7.8% of the target audience; it will also provide a GRP that gives the offline equivalent for an online campaign.
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Brand investments in
online advertising will follow traditional metrics, such as reach frequency and GRPs, a metric fundamental to offline brand advertisers, not just click-through rates.
"We're not translating
our media plans," Song says. "It's one reason we're not seeing traditional media dollars move online because they don't know what they're buying."
Advertisers also need to measure more than
the last ad. If a marketer's view remains on the last ad, they will start at the purchase funnel. "You may end up with a great ROI, but just a handful of conversations," he adds. "And we all know
that's not sustainable."