• by Tom Hespos , December 7, 2004

A couple of weeks ago, I had just finished planning a campaign against a niche audience that delivered targeted impressions to a very narrow target. Of course, the client wanted to know how they could measure the reach and frequency of this campaign, so they could use MixMaster or whatever R/F/GRP combining tool they had on hand to get a measure of reach across vehicles.

The buying audience for this particular campaign was women 25 to 44. And, of course, I used our forecasting tool to come up with some numbers for that demographic. But when I factored in that I was paying a premium for inventory that was targeted a lot tighter than traditional media and that the actual audience was much smaller than the universe of women 25 to 44, my cost per point was not looking very attractive in comparison to other vehicles the client was using.

It would have been easy for the client on the other end of the phone to simply say to me, "Why should I pay this premium CPP when I can reach these people more cheaply through magazines or TV?" Instead, he showed me his understanding of the medium, which was quite encouraging.

With the way I had targeted the online plan, nearly all of the ads would reach the true target - the one qualified not just by demographics, but also by psychographics and behavior. The same could not be said for offline channels that always had some degree of waste involved. Before I could launch into my usual diatribe about the targetability of online advertising, the client said that he understood the quality of the audience we were reaching. I was quite happy that finally someone got it.

But not everyone "gets it." These outdated metrics - demographics - that we are often asked to use in evaluating the effectiveness of our online ad plans, are often the criteria by which all media delivery are measured. Some clients, when they hear constant parroting of demographics, forget that the demographic audience is simply a surrogate for the people that campaigns aspire to reach. And then they see that demographic delivery report and start wondering, "Why online?" all over again.

This problem could go away if we forced offline media to live up to the expectation of relevance that properly targeted online campaigns set. The TV can't reach those left-handed underwater basket weavers without waste, but their delivery looks efficient when one evaluates delivery against men 18 to 49.

I don't want to get into a discussion about gross rating point (GRP) versus targeting rating point (TRP). Many media people and many clients don't know the difference, or have never heard of a TRP. Or, worse, they use the terms interchangeably.

The best way to solve the problem is to make sure clients understand that a cost per point based on a simple demographic audience is likely not going to give a true measure of how much it costs to reach people in the planning target. When we properly target ads online, we have very little waste. But TV, radio, outdoor, and often to a lesser extent, print cannot trim back on the waste like online can. And when these media are evaluated on a basic demographic audience that doesn't match the actual target, the playing field isn't level.

In many cases, online agencies may not have access to the details of offline plans, but to avoid the appearance of inefficiency, online agencies should be sure to speak to their clients about measurement and why the playing field isn't level when we're dealing with broad demographics.