• by Christopher M. Schroeder , July 11, 2004

Last week, I defined the "Senior Executive Conundrum" in online advertising. Senior Execs are active online users and among the most coveted demographic for marketers. Yet they seem almost unmeasurable, as they are unlikely to click through, complete a branding study, or even fulfill a transaction directly when they have others do it for them. My answer was that ALL media face this conundrum, and that online media should simply be held to the same standards. This, and a dose of common sense, would win out for the time being.

You had some strong reactions as I received more emails to this column than any other. I thought I'd share a sampling as the dialogue continues.

Many of you agreed that common sense should rule here. Nathaniel Litwak, partner at Squam Capital in Greenwich, CT., thinks online advertising's influence on senior execs is clear. First, top honchos who don't execute and plan travel is a pretty small category-plenty execs outside of Fortune 500 companies, in fact, DO execute their travel plans. Second, even when they don't physically consummate a transaction, they are aware of deals. "A good friend of mine is head of M&A at a major international bank and travels a ton. His assistant usually books all his business AND personal travel. But he's totally aware of British Airways sleeper class, or special direct flights to his house in Jackson Hole. He will definitely direct his assistant to book what he wants with whom he wants, all things [being] equal, of course. Also, when I had a secretary book my travel, I was always telling her what airline I wanted to use. I got the AMEX Platinum card because I could get a free business class ticket, presumably for my lovely wife, when I paid full-fare business. Either way, the 'senior executive' was, and is, targetable and penetrable by pretty pedestrian means."

Others wrote that all the fuss over senior execs is overblown. Wrote Opsware Chairman Marc Andreessen, "I would say that big companies are such gigantic self-propelled machines that the senior executives can often be irrelevant and everything is still fine. Most of the critical decisions are made at the VP level-those are the people who are still close enough to the products and the customers to know what to do. The critical decisions senior executives do make usually have the property that it will be several years before you know whether they were the right calls or not, often after the executive retires. Also, while I'm at it, the primary reason to pay senior executives a lot of money has nothing to do with them or their skills, but rather to incent the junior executives who really matter to stay engaged and motivated versus going off to start or run their own thing." Spoken like a true entrepreneur!

From Japan, TK Tanemura, Deputy Manager of Web and Mobile for Nihon Nihon Keizai Shimbun, agreed, in part. "Some top executives only authorize the product that their staff proposes." The complementary role between senior executives and mid-level managers, however, is significant in the Nikkei Net's advertising strategy. In Japan, department heads, section managers, general employees generate the lion's share of technology purchase proposals and evaluation, but the authorization to buy comes from the top. Their goal, therefore, is to reach decision makers across the buying spectrum.

Some wrote in defense of parity-that online media should be held to the standards of ALL media. And this, for no other reason, because traditional media such as television will one day be held to the same standards of interactive! Discovery.com CEO Bill Allman wrote: "In the end, iMedia's measurability make come back to haunt all advertising. We're already hearing from advertisers that they won't pay with regard to 30-second commercials shown on the Web as a 'stream' if the viewer clicks off, or closes the video before 15 seconds elapse. In a VOD/PVR set-top world, this may be technically possible, too. And it's my understanding that it's technically possible for Nielsen to give ratings to ads on TV too, but for some reason, it doesn't. So, if Nielsen is getting this measurability for commercials on the Web, how soon before it starts asking for it on other platforms?"

Dave Flaschen, a partner with Flagship Ventures, agrees and underscores the importance of just seeing the ads online. "I do believe impressions matter. The reason the click-through crowd doesn't acknowledge it is because they can show a closed loop of impulse to action that advertisers have always asked for. The value of impression-based advertising is real, but notoriously tough to measure. In today's return-on-investment world, it is getting pushed aside for online spending. As usage continues to grow at the expense of other media, you will see the traditional brandbuilders pay more attention to online. Regarding demographics, you will see more sites do the classic survey work needed to profile their users. Friendster, as an example, already has this lined up and very clearly sees its value as a way to connect advertisers with a hard to reach demographic. This is the tip of the iceberg."

A few of you were greatly intrigued by the power of using a combination of registration and behavioral targeting data to refine, in ways no marketer could debate, who is being reached, when. Michael Gottdenker, CEO of Access Spectrum, noted, "It is possible through the use of cookies or other technology to track daytime Internet use of tops execs at any given company if you know their email address. And, getting the email addresses of most senior execs would seem to be pretty straightforward. I read something somewhere recently about privacy concerns with all of this, but from a technology standpoint it would seem to be possible."

And some of you just thought I should shut up with the philosophizing, and get on with the hard, analytic research. Keith Law, Special Assistant to the general manager of The Boston Red Sox, is one of the great masters of analytics in finding new talent. "I felt that the column really lost steam about halfway through, right around the paragraph 'Registration helps.' The momentum of the column disappeared. I think that any column like this needs to be more strongly grounded in facts and history. Many of the questions that you pose have likely been addressed elsewhere before, if not always satisfactorily. What studies have been done on the topic? What answers do they give us? What did those studies miss?"

I must confess, if the answer to the Senior Executive Conundrum has been addressed well elsewhere, I've not been able to find it. Hey, Online Publishers Association and Interactive Advertising Bureau, help me out, will ya?