• by Tameka Kee , May 7, 2008

In the fragmented media landscape, cross-platform campaigns have become one of the go-to strategies in an advertiser's arsenal--particularly when it comes to reaching the 18-34 demographic. But as panelists at Digital Hollywood noted on Tuesday, those plans--including branded entertainment deals, in- and around-game ads, and mobile video promotions--still suffer from a lack of standardized performance metrics and clear return on investment.

For David Getson, CEO of g-NET Media, branded entertainment is the name of the game--particularly when it comes to reaching the gamer demographic. Los Angeles-based g-NET creates original content for companies like EA, Sony and Activision that can jump from the Web to a mobile phone, to a video on demand (VOD)-enabled HDTV.

"In the past, it was about context, and setting an ad blockade where everyone was traveling through," Getson said. "But now there's no straight path to reach the consumer. So we switched from setting blockades to dropping land mines. This way, the consumer bumps into them wherever they are, at whatever section of the purchase cycle they're in."

Still, quantifying the value of one of g-NET's advertainment campaigns involves aggregating data from multiple sources, including anecdotal metrics like publisher-sponsored viral activity monitoring tools.

"There are rudimentary tools available to track content from TV, VOD and the Web, but they don't provide all of the answers," Getson said. "Some buyers want to know how many people the content reached, others want to know how long they viewed, and the client often just wants sales metrics. So we cobble it together to show how it performed overall."

Meanwhile, for content providers like Denver-based ManiaTV, quantifying the audience--not the content--becomes problematic. For an original video content site with roughly four million unique monthly viewers, ManiaTV's challenge is getting advertisers to grasp the value of its niche audience, and pay the appropriate CPMs for them.

"If we build a game show and an advertiser wants more reach, our partner distribution strategy allows us to expand across that category," said Sean Ryan, vice president of sales operations at ManiaTV. "But we're trying to balance a fine line. You have to be careful about how big you get and where you send your content--because then the user experience becomes diluted."