• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, June 9, 2004

Can you believe that it's almost the middle of June? Where does the time go?

It seems as though our industry moves at the speed of light and everything is on a very short time table. If you've ever seen the movie "About A Boy," there's a part when Hugh Grant's character breaks down his life into 30-minute periods, sort of like a sitcom. I sometimes think our industry is broken down in a similar fashion. It sometimes seems as though every 30 minutes there is a new show with new characters and a new plot.

What I'm getting at is a way to describe the situation that produces the question, "How long should it take for an interactive ad campaign to be considered a success or a failure?" This question is related to the even more simplistic question of, "How long does it take to build a brand online?"

It seems all too often our industry is held to a unique set of criteria for judging success. For example, when you launch a new campaign for a new brand, how long should the campaign be live before you dive into optimization mode? How long does it take for your efforts to reach critical awareness and raise the curiosity of the user to inspire a reaction?

When agencies work with clients to develop and launch a campaign, it seems like a single 30-minute sitcom, where everyone works through the process of campaign development and both sides agree to the outcome of a campaign that will go live and will start to drive your metrics. Then the show is over, and the next sitcom comes on. In this new sitcom, no one remembers what the strategy was in the last episode, and everyone is focused on immediate sales. If it ain't working, cancel it! The initial strategy may have implied patience and a gradual build whereas this new strategy is based on pure DR and a limited tolerance for testing and risk. How many times have you launched a campaign in the past with metrics based on a Cost Per Sale to be used to judge success, but two weeks in the client is asking, "what's the click rate?"

If we examine other media vehicles we can see that there are industry norms that point out the acceptable waiting period before praising or condemning a strategy and moving to optimization (if possible in that medium). In print we recognize a pass-along readership will not cume for about 3 months, so you have to wait 3 months to determine if the ad was effective. You also know that one print ad does not make an ad campaign. In Direct TV, which is very comparable to our interactive model, there is still a window of acceptable patience whereby optimization is minimal in order to acquire a baseline of knowledge. In all of these media vehicles we calculate in an expected latent conversion to determine if the acquisition is via an impulse or via a considered purchase, thereby also accounting for a level of patience and exposure to risk.

We need to start sharing case studies and moving to publish these types of datapoints for the interactive medium. Clients are asking for industry norms all the time, but the data is scarce as no one wants to give away their secrets and everything is a competitive advantage. I'm guilty of this as well, but we do need to begin to share some data. Without this data, we could be setting expectations too high and setting ourselves up for failure.

After reading this and pondering it during our 30 minutes together, you will go to the next period of 30, on to a new sitcom, and will probably forget about these ideas. I ask that you take along the spirit of the idea. The spirit to provide the industry with information to fuel its own growth.

If we can get smarter about our work as an industry and provide more detailed support for our recommendations, then we are benefiting ourselves in a unified, stronger fashion. Then we can start to tackle the answer to, "How long does it take to build a brand online?"