GroupM Makes Connections, Hopes It Leads To Holy Grail

Media buying giant GroupM has launched a new measurement tool designed to answer the famous question: 50 percent of advertising works and the other half falls short--but which is which?

The new research metric, called Connections, promises to advise advertisers and media planners about how various kinds of media influence consumers through the chain that runs from exposure to purchase--now broadly defined as engagement. The ambitious initiative aims for nothing less than insight into the Holy Grail of marketing: what really leads to consumer purchase.

Connections evaluates the effectiveness of campaigns that employ up to 40 marketing channels, from 30-second spots to print to in-store to below-the-line.

Connections--which will be called upon to answer targeted questions about a particular marketing initiative's impact--was developed with the help of London-based research psychologists, and will employ measurement approaches from Millward Brown, a WPP unit that falls under the same holding company umbrella as GroupM.

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Connections promises to gauge four drivers of engagement with a contact point: notice-ability (how likely consumers are to pay attention), affinity (likeability and trust), relevance (interest level) and involvement (whether it leads to consumer action).

GroupM agencies Maxus, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia, and MindShare will all use Connections.

"By using Connections, marketers are for the first time able to measure and optimize consumer engagement across a multitude of distinct connection points, thereby developing more efficient and effective communications campaigns suited to this new era," said Irwin Gotlieb, GroupM CEO.

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