Will ROI Replace The CPM? Telmar Launches New System That Claims It Will

Media planners like their acronyms, and based on a new development, may be adding a new one - ROI - alongside such time-tested jargon as R&F, GRP, and CPM. ROI, of course, stands for return-on-investment, and while that may always have been an implicit part of the media planning process, a new product being introduced by media planning and workflow systems provider Telmar, promises to make it a very explicit one. The new system, dubbed Matterhorn, incorporates data analyzing the effectiveness of billions of dollars of marketing campaigns to understand the impact specific media - and changes in media plans - have on marketing goals.

While those goals frequently are short-term sales results, or some key performance metric, the new Telmar system is designed to factor other important results as well, including brand awareness, differentiation and persuasion over the life of a media plan.

This has been the Holy Grail of media planning for years," said Telmar chief Stan Federman, during an exclusive preview of the system for MediaDailyNews. Federman was referring to the elusive goal of tying media exposure to marketing results, and the multitude of attempts made on Madison Avenue - including expensive "single-source" measurement systems, and proprietary marketer and agency systems. While many of those efforts continue, including a new collaboration between Nielsen Co. and Calatina Marketing, Federman said Telmar's system has been designed to make the process easy for planners to use on-the-fly with criteria that are relevant for specific consumer marketing categories.

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The data, which is based on years of statistical analysis by Marketing Evolution Inc., a leader in the field of marketing mix modeling, initially will enable markets and agencies to look at upwards of 147 ROI variables for 15 discrete marketing categories, including major ones such as automotive, financial services, entertainment and consumer packaged goods.

Federman said Telmar is offering those categories to one agency each for the first six months of the service, and then will open it to the general marketplace.

Telmar has already been working with one big shop, Santa Monica, CA-based independent RPA, which is known for both its creativity as well as its marketing effectiveness.

"Reach and frequency is great. CPM is great, but what's it really going to do in terms of moving my client's goods," Federman said. Now planners have the ability to take the time-consumer marketing ROI analysis and build it into their plans."

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