• The Unbearable Lightness Of Branding
    If your day job involves creating, defending or presenting a media plan featuring seven or eight digits in the bottom right cell, chances are you truly believe in branding. And you live in a strange, strange world. Direct-response campaigns bring in new customers, move the inventory and are held accountable to hard business KPIs. Branding is about creating awareness, perceptions and attitudes. Direct response results are evident from campaign data itself. However, figuring out the impact of a multimillion-dollar branding campaign can require custom research done by a bunch of Ph.Ds. If this was YOUR money, where would you rather …
  • Seeing Viewability Clearly
    As the ecosystem continues to transition to a viewable display advertising currency and dives deeply into the nuances of digital video viewability, the prodigious efforts many companies and individuals have made to further these goals are more and more visible. The Media Ratings Council (MRC), Association of National Advertisers (ANA), American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A's) and Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) have been publishing materials and producing webinars and Town Halls, and even launched a comprehensive site devoted to Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS), to get industry stakeholders prepared for the dramatic shift that is nearly upon us.
  • Now Trending: Trending Data
    Despite its appeal, many marketers struggle to unlock the value and potential of big data, given how unwieldy and complex it can be. Recently, however, big data inched closer to marketing's center stage, as several tech titans are making a clear bet on one key application of the troves of new information being collected daily: trends.
  • Reduce Unmeasurable Inventory Now: Viewable-Impression Standard Coming
    If you rely on ad impressions, measure ad impressions or otherwise buy or sell digital advertising, be aware that we are reaching the end of a lengthy process. Likely by the end of December 2013, the Media Rating Council (MRC) will lift its advisory on transacting on viewable impressions -- hence, thereafter endorsing this new counting method as a currency. When this happens, we expect the floodgates will open, and a currency shift will begin in practice.
  • Revisiting Return On Rank: The Ultimate SEO KPI?
    Last August I wrote a column over on the Search Insider blog, "The Ultimate SEO KPI: Return On Rank," where I lamented that the uplift from SEO activities had become increasingly difficult to quantify. Keyword rank reporting, which identifies where a website "ranks" across major search engines for targeted keyword phrases, had lost its usefulness. What is needed is a replacement measure that would better equip the SEO to understand, and report on, the quantitative impact of their efforts. What is needed is a new KPI. I call it return on rank (ROR).
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