Posts Tagged ‘Media Planning’

December 3rd, 2008

Can marketing use social media networks for advertising?

,So the mighty P&G has spoken about social media. When these companies speak the marketing community has to listen. These guys think long and hard about the issues to cut straight through the hype. I know because I did it for Unilever. I worked directly with Unilever digital teams to help them understand the real value of digital media to their business. So, what was the basic message emanating from P&G? Well it’s that social media is not “media” and there’s no point in advertising around “someone breaking up with their girlfriend”.

I disagree slightly with the first part of this criticism. Social media is a form of media because it is space which carries content and delivers an audience that can be traded for money. From an advertising perspective these are the core characteristics of a “medium”. The big question comes when we try to explore what type of medium social media actually is.

In reality social media is not social media, it’s personal media. Social media is really comprised of groups of individuals sharing their personal communications. These social media communications are online versions of personal phone calls, text messages or letters. And whilst in some cases individuals may be prepared to publish these communications, it doesn’t follow that advertising placed in them will be effective. Such advertising is the equivalent of a radio ad in a phone call.

Advertising media planning is no longer about reach (and sites like Facebook certainly deliver reach). Twenty-first century media planning is about going deeper than reach, it’s about delivering mindsets, engagement and involvement. And it’s a fact that whilst an individual is deeply involved in a personal communication, like dumping their girlfriend, they are unlikely to engage with advertising in or around that communication. This notion was encapsulated by David Ogilvy who once observed that you’re more likely to get the best direct response from an ad placed in the afternoon movie repeat than in the latest episode of Dallas (The big hit drama of the day). In other words, advertising can’t win when competing with high value content.

A few months ago on I wrote “Advertising on social networks is a Web 1.0 technique in a Web 2.0 world. It may be the case that carrying ads is not a sustainable route for these networks or for advertisers.” I think this remains the case. It’s a problem for the likes of Facebook though, because if they cannot monetize their inventory their value will fall. So how might sites like Facebook monetize their inventory? I think their answer is to monetize the relationships they have with their users. But this isn’t an ad model. It’s something more akin to Seth Godin’s permission marketing and value exchange. Facebook has a brand franchise. It needs to provide added value to its users by teaming up with partners and offering deals to its users. Social media should be an enabler which allows companies and individuals to exchange value.

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December 1st, 2008

Advertising Frequency and Diminishing Marginal Utility

Economists have a concept called Diminishing Marginal Utility. This means that each additional time a consumer consumes something they get less satisfaction from consuming it. So, if I have one coffee, I find it very satisfying, two could be OK, but by the time I get to three I’m not getting much additional satisfaction, infact, I’m going off coffee pretty fast. And if I were to drink ten coffees I’d feel like I was being tortured.

Now let me apply this thinking to the world of TV advertising and in particular, sponsorship. In the UK, quality drama is a favourite for sponsorship. One of the reasons for this is that these programmes attract a high quality loyal audience who make an appointment to view. Certain drama strands can be sponsored heavily in a cross-programme deal covering different programmes in the same genre. Whilst this may appear to present great media value it can mean over-exposure for both brands and consumers. Seeing a break bumper a couple of times is fine, but seeing the same branded break bumper ten times in the same evening can seem like drinking that tenth cup of coffee.

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May 6th, 2008

Does offline advertising drive online site visits?

Many advertisers are asking whether offline media drives their online traffic and to what degree. I recently had to review this for a major blue chip advertiser so I thought I’d share the sources and results I’ve found:

1. Jupiter/IPSOS Study
Jupiter and IPSOS got together in 2007 to survey 2,000 US web search users to analyse what drove them to make web searches. The Jupiter/IPSOS research found that 37% of respondents claimed they had searched in response to a TV ad, 30% had searched as a result of seeing a newspaper or magazine ad, 17% had searched after hearing a radio ad and 9% had searched after seeing an outdoor billboard ad. These results were higher amongst “daily searchers” i.e. people who say the use search engines at least on a daily basis. For example the percentage of daily searchers quoting TV and press/magazines as an influence climbed from 37% to 44% for TV and from 30% to 35% for a magazine ad.

2. PPA / BMRB Study
The PPA, a trade body representing UK press and magazine titles, undertook a survey of 3,045 online adults aged 16-64 during August 2007. The research found that 70% of those surveyed had visited a web site as a result of seeing offline communication and 58% of online adults have made a purchase online as a result of seeing offline messaging. When asked, “Which of the following have triggered you to go online when looking for information on products that you have considered purchasing?“ the responses were as follows:

TV - 50%
Magazines - 45%
Newspapers - 31%
Radio ads - 17%

3. Retail Advertising and Marketing Association / BIGresearch (US study)
The Retail Advertising and Marketing Association (RAMA) undertook research with BIGresearch in the US and surveyed over 15,000 consumers in its Simultaneous Media Survey. This project found the top 10 media that trigger an online search (Adults 18+) to be:

51.6% Magazine
47.7% Read an Article
44.2% TV / Broadcast
41.3% Newspaper
35.6% Cable TV
35.3% Face-to-Face Communication
33.8% Coupons
30.3% Email Advertising
29.3% Direct Mail
28.2% Radio

4. Hitwise Media Impact Report
This report contains good case studies from the AA, Orange and Sky. Key take outs are firstly that integrated campaigns drive greater levels of search volume and secondly that product specific advertising in offline channels e.g. press can have a positive uplift effect on the search terms that reflect the product being advertised in that offline channel.

Understanding your own traffic sources
All brands have their own DNA and industry and category level research will only give you an indication of how offline media might drive online traffic to your web site. Only a bespoke analysis using your own media data and search/web traffic logs will help you to understand how offline media drives traffic to your site.

There’s no need to get into intricate modelling to reveal these relationships. Most statisticians will begin even the most complex analysis by simply plotting media activity looking for patterns. Try plotting your media activity (e.g. spend, impacts or GRPs) and search traffic volume data (only relevant terms) into charts and observing the patterns. This may be sufficient to illustrate whether offline media is driving traffic to your site.

Your analysis will be much stronger if you are able to strip out all referred traffic and focus on direct traffic when looking for these relationships. If you use a reporting tool like Google Analytics, you can strip out all traffic source data that can be explained by other activity such as paid search, banner campaigns or link referrals. You are then able to isolate direct organic search traffic coming into your site and compare that with your media activity.

Larger brands with more complex and inter-related traffic drivers may have to undertake more sophisticated econometric modelling to isolate the effect of individual traffic-driving variables and remove the effects of underlying seasonality and brand awareness.

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March 17th, 2008

Search Marketing: A new era for TV effectiveness?

For many years TV advertising has struggled to present convincing arguments about its effectiveness. Whilst it has been possible to show the linkage between TV activity and advertising awareness, it has been far more difficult to identify and statistically explain a causal relationship between TV advertising and sales.

What’s missing is the numerical stepping stone that forms a quantifiable link between TV advertising and sales response. If such a measure were in place, it would become easier to create and cross the “bridge” between TV advertising and attributable sales - and to build compelling arguments for TV advertising in the Digital Age.

Search traffic data may now be providing this bridge. There is increasing and compelling evidence that TV advertising drives search traffic and that the linkages are highly quantifiable. For example, the AA have teamed up with Hitwise and i-Level to contribute the ‘Hitwise UK Media Impact Report‘. This report contains two case studies, from the AA and Sky, which build on the TV advertising to Search traffic argument.

The effect of TV advertising on search metrics may be as deep as it is potentially broad; There is evidence that TV advertising affects conversion metrics within search activity. When these effects are quantified they can produce dramatic ROI results. For example, if TV advertising increases a) search volumes b) conversion rates from click to bona fide lead c) conversion to sale and d) sales value, then the argument for TV advertising becomes extremely compelling. In fact, the sorts of uplifts that are being reported against these deeper metrics are at the levels that can make a TV campaign potentially self-funding.

Whilst many in the marketing community discuss ‘either or’ arguments about TV advertising and search marketing, they may be more amply rewarded if they move to a synchronisation point of view. TV advertising and search marketing may be so closely linked that we embark on a new era of TV effectiveness.

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February 25th, 2008

New Internet Measurement Panel

This month, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the Association of Online Publishers and ISBA (Incorporated Society of British Advertisers) have announced a joint venture to create a BARB* style audience measurement panel for the Internet in the UK. The panel will be managed through JICIMS, the Joint Industry Committee for Internet Measurement Systems.

The advent of this panel could herald a major stepping stone in online’s journey to full maturity as an advertising medium. But equally, the creation of such a panel creates a Premier League of online media owners. What does this mean for those online media owners who don’t make it into the top flight?

It’s great to be in the BARB Club

In the TV world, being on the BARB panel puts your channel firmly on the radar of media planners. When measured by BARB, your channel is part of a Premier League of measured media options. These are the channels which have high critical mass; they have enough audience to value being measured and enough cash to pay for being measured. Planners use presence on BARB as a proxy for quality. Because all channels on BARB are measured in the same way, using the same currency, planners can make a fair assessment of media value when evaluating a range of channels. So, if you’re on BARB it is far easier to command the attention of media planners and therefore much easier to get your site included in the planner’s media recommendation.

But not so good if you’re on the outside

Unfortunately the average media planner is short on time. If he or she can solve a communications planning problem from within a pre-selected group of measurable channels, then they will. Why should they extend their attention beyond 200 or so BARB measured channels? Channels outside BARB tend to be small (they don’t think being on BARB will help them because their audiences are so small) or cash strapped (not able to afford to £25k+ fee required to be included on BARB). For many time-starved media planners, these marginals simply aren’t worth the bother.

What does a BARB style panel mean for online?

It’s obvious from the experiences of the TV market that panel members will become part of an elite group of media owners - the Premier League of online. This select group of media owners will inevitably form the start point for many online media planners and they will find it easier to be included in media recommendations. Those sites not on the panel will struggle to be included on plans and consequently struggle to gain revenue.

To cut a long story short, life without an online measurement panel makes it easier for smaller sites to survive. With the online panel in place that emphasis is likely to shift; making it easier for larger sites to gain revenue and build reputation, and push smaller sites onto the outside margins of planners’ attention. So, rather ironically, the desire to make online a more measurable medium could favour the few and disadvantage the many.

* For those not familiar with BARB, the BARB panel is a panel of 5,000 homes in the UK which uses a ‘Peoplemeter’ device to track the TV viewing patterns of occupants of the sample household.

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January 3rd, 2008

Coverage, frequency and response rates - the old rules apply online too

Every now and then the topic of coverage, frequency and response rates arises and marketing or agency personnel find themselves trying to identify the optimal levels of communications spend required to maximise response ROI. Some argue that in order to maximise response rates the message has to be seen ’several times’ before it is acted upon. Others take the view that each ad has to stand on its own two feet and ‘do the the business’ each time it is seen. So what is the optimal frequency level required to maximise direct response ROI?

Over the last few weeks I’ve had cause to dip into both Drayton Bird’s excellent Common Sense Direct Marketing and also Graeme McCorkell’s equally robust and informative Direct and Database Marketing. Both the books emphasise what I know to be the case from countless experiments:

Any direct response ad must wash its face on the first exposure. Adding exposures actually decreases the overall response rate and consequently increases the overall cost per response.

McCorkell’s view is as follows: “each single press insertion or TV transmission is an event in its own right, required to justify its cost by a directly produced return”. Drayton Bird supports this view and even builds his argument with a case study from 1912. He quotes “a man called Shryer who studied what happens when you repeat advertisements. He learned that if you run an ad a second time, it does not get better results. It generally gets worse.”

Nearly 100 years after Shryer, this rule has also been found to apply online. Around 2000 I remember Doubleclick tracked the relationship between online ad exposures and online response rates. They found that with every layer of incremental frequency, response rates dropped by around 50%. This means that in an online environment you will get the highest % return from the first exposure i.e. by building coverage, not frequency. This was re-examined again by Atlas in 2004 and they reached similar conclusions about the importance of the first exposure. The extensive work of John Philip Jones at Syracuse University has also resulted in findings that support the importance of the first exposure. Jones found that:

1) One exposure has a significant effect on purchasing.
2) Two exposures do not have twice the effect of one exposure but usually cost twice as much.
3) This diminishing return deepens as more frequency is added to the campaign.

It’s interesting that “below the line” channels like direct mail and door to door often produce far higher response rates than “above the line” channels like TV, press and radio. Whilst the main reasons for this are related to the personal nature of direct mail and door to door, it is also worth bearing in mind that by definition these modes of communication are very low frequency channels; they basically optimise at 1 exposure. If below the line channels like direct mail were used at the same frequencies as above the line media i.e. 5-8 OTS then their response rates would be more than 90% lower those usually experienced.

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