The discussion around online GRPs is the wrong conversation.
There's been lots of discussion about creating a Web version of the gross rating point, which is a number used to measure
the size of an audience reached by a media vehicle or plan. It's the product of the percentage of the target audience reached by an ad times the frequency they see it in a given campaign.
This is an exposure-based metric created when it was very difficult to measure the performance of an ad campaign. All we could measure was exposure, so we did. Now there are many channels that allow
us to closely measure performance, especially the digital channel.
The source of this exposure-based info is typically from Arbitron for radio, Nielsen for TV and MRI for print. Arbitron,
Nielsen and MRI measure the size of an audience by asking people in a national projected representative surveys whether they watched, viewed or listened to a particular media vehicle.
While
many have always been uncomfortable with the survey methodology to accurately measure all audiences, statisticians have verified it. These companies have done a very good job at devising the best
possible solutions given the technology; after all you can't survey everyone in real time.
While I understand trying to apply a GRP metric to online media, I think it's the wrong
discussion. Instead, I'd like to try and force other media to be more accountable. If other media can't be more accountable, they should lose budgets to those media that are accountable, trackable and
measureable.
I'm not suggesting that all budgets should move from other channels to online, at least not yet. There are many marketing requirements that digital still can't deliver. I'm
also aware that when we run multichannel campaigns, the overall performance of a campaign improves, e.g. TV drives faster online conversions.
But what I love about online media is that it's
trackable and as a result, easily optimized. I wish post-view/listen/read for TV, radio and print were as trackable and optimizeable. In fact, I don't care how many people I reach online. What I care
about is what they do. Because I can measure what they do, I don't care how many I reach.
The only reason why we care about how many people we expose to a message in those other media
channels is that it's so hard to measure what they do after they see a commercial.
A popular argument for exposure and reach, particularly around brand budgets, is that we need to inform
lots of people about our brand proposition. We're told that brand awareness is very important because it's an indication of importance and vitality. I'm not so sure if that's true any more.
I don't care if people know about a brand if they're not going to take some action, either by buying it or promoting. Online, I can measure both. I can easily create ways for consumers to buy a
product or take an action that indicates with a high probability they will buy the product, e.g. request for more specific information). Or, I can persuade them to share or comment on a message in a
way that allows them to promote the brand.
And now, I can even assign attribution to each digital exposure. If it takes 30 digital exposures for a consumer to take an action, I can assign a
value to each and every exposure.
In the past, we also used the argument that it was important to create brand awareness so when consumers were ready to buy, they would know a particular
brand existed. Now that we can tell when people are in-market, predict when they will be in market, and begin sending them relevant messages based on behavior, creating awareness months ahead is a
very expensive marketing tactic few brands can afford. We no longer have to spray and pray, nor should we.
It's no longer enough for advertising to just create awareness. Awareness without
a meaningful measurable action is a wasted budget. A marketer that doesn't ask a consumer to take a measurable action is just lazy.
GRPs are lazy metrics because they're just measuring
exposure. I don't care how many people are exposed to my message; I care what they do as a result of seeing the message. Our communication should be constructed so we can capture behaviors and we
should invest in media that allows us to do that.
We shouldn't sell plans based on how many people have an opportunity to be exposed to our message. Our clients deserve far more certainty.
It would be far better for our industry to create metrics tied to performance than exposure.