My column two weeks ago, "Buying Banners = Burning Money," has generated a lot of
conversations, both public and private. Most people would concede that "reach" without impact is not truly reach, but rather defend the impact of impressions. As I said two weeks ago, some impressions
are valuable, but most are not, and it's in the ability to tell the difference where the problem lies.
I realize that this is an issue I am very close to, so it always helps to read other
people's perspectives, which is why I appreciate the comments and tweets. It was also particularly refreshing to read "Attention
Economics in Online Advertising" by Matt Shanahan, senior vice president of strategy for Scout Analytics. He does an excellent job of framing the issue with digital display advertising, especially
his vision of how television advertising would look if it was sold and measured on digital metrics.
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The issue seems to be the industrywide perception that while there may be a variance in
quality of impressions, enough quantity can make up for it. What I am saying is that even an infinite number of meaningless impressions will deliver meaningless results. It is not the fault of any one
point in the advertising value chain.
Marketers hold agencies accountable more often for "reaching" (look, I know the whole "quotes" thing is getting old, but the word reach is so
commonly misused in digital marketing today that I can't bring myself to write it in this context without quotes -- a pixel loading on a page is not reach) target demographics metrics rather than
impacting target demographics. Agencies RFP publishers based on delivering pixels to pages. Publishers in turn design systems to maximize the number of pixel loads (again, I love Shanahan's
description of television if advertising had evolved this way). And for their part, consumers do their best to avoid all of it.
But there is a better way. So here is the deal: I am willing to
guarantee that 1 million consumer engagements will have a greater impact on awareness, preference, purchase intent and sales than whatever ludicrous number of banner impressions could be bought with
the same funds. I know this because we have seen that designing and bringing consumers into richer brand experiences is worth many multiples the typical massive pixel load plan.
Think of it
this way. If one million people engage with a brand experience, 24 hours later nearly 900,000 will recall that interaction. How many people do you think can/will recall a banner 24 hours later if they
don't click on it, even if they're served it multiple times? How many banners can you recall right now of all the banners ever served to you? I am seriously willing to follow through on this
guarantee, and would love to do a study and post the results right here on MediaPost. If you are a brand that wants to see if the emperor is wearing any clothes, contact me and we can discuss.
A lot of the discussion I hear about banners and clicks is that banners served in context will generate clicks of those interested in the product or service, like a camera banner on a photography
website. That is simply DR and bottom-of-funnel marketing. I think we have known that for a long time; Google does a pretty good job with that technique. Why is it when I am watching "House" on
television, all the commercials aren't medically themed? Because relevance for brand advertising is not about the context, it's about connecting to the consumer. It requires different thinking.
Okay, have at it in the comments. I really do want to keep this conversation going. Also, keep up with the latest rants and random events as I tweet from www.twitter.com/joemarchese.