Next Steps: A Seven-Point Plan

This final section summarizes the next steps for the industry in a short, seven-point action plan. Once again, in keeping with the community nature of this report, the reader is encouraged to add comments and suggestions.

1. Reorganize and Restructure Your Teams

First, marketers need to restructure their organizations so that online marketing reports directly to the CMO. This is the only way that attribution and cross-platform models will be successful.

Second, marketers and their ad agencies need to reorganize their internal teams and structures to concentrate on the branding component of the online measurement process as a separate and distinct process from direct response measurement.

Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i, put it well: “Digital is too often synonymous with direct response. CMOs need to look at their marketing organizations and the way their agency roster is organized. If they want digital to be an effective brand-building medium, they need to reorganize their departments and have people who understand digital and agencies that understand digital. Everything else follows from that.”

Added Mr. Wiener, “There needs to be a clear separation and delineation between brand objectives/metrics and direct response objectives/metrics. I think mixing the two, which we’ve all been guilty of, has created more confusion.”

To quote author Jim Collins, you also need get the right people on the bus. Specifically, you need two kinds of people: left-brainers and right-brainers.

Left-brainers manage the terabytes of data, build complex models with databases that talk to each other, and then channel that data into actionable insights. Left-brainers are typically logical, sequential, rational, analytical and objective. They look at parts.

Right-brainers are the creative types who can craft advertising that strikes an emotional chord, changes attitudes and motivates people to buy. Right-brainers are random, intuitive, holistic, synthesizing and subjective. They look at wholes.

And finally, of course, you have to bring the left-brainers and right-brainers together. As John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, told eMarketer, “There has to be a change in the way agencies are structured. Media buying, media planning and creative have to be done cross-platform.”

2. Partner

Key stakeholders, including ad agencies, research houses, portals and Web analytics firms, should strive to establish deep, broadly encompassing partnerships. The goal? To build up huge, multiplatform databases that sync up demographic data, audience data, attitudinal data, behavioral data and transactional data.

Focus on hybrid models that combine the best of panel measurement and brand intercept platforms.

3. Build Cross-Media Coalitions

The major media trade associations, including the IAB, ARF, 4A’s, ANA, OPA and the WAA (Web Analytics Association) must step up their efforts to align goals and committee efforts to develop common standards, definitions and best practices for measurement. A common currency is also a must.

As such, the industry needs to develop standardized methods for applying reach, frequency and GRPs to online platforms. (Importantly, the denominator in the GRP equation must be the total US population, or total target universe—not the population of the medium.)

The adoption of GRPs will be a starting point in providing marketers with apples-to-apples measurements that they can plug into their media mix models.

Building on the GRP model as a foundation, the next step is to overlay the data that is unique to the online space and provides a digital footprint measuring how the consumer is engaged with the brand over a period of time. This could include time spent as well as a host of other engagement metrics. The goal is to move from media ad buckets and data silos to true integration—measuring across media.

4. Create Next-Generation Attribution Models

Put a laserlike focus on building attribution models to identify and quantify the value of every media touchpoint along the purchase funnel. Tie that data into holistic models that can help marketers make future decisions about media allocations, both within the online universe and across all media platforms. Among other skill sets, this will require a mastery of Web analytics.

Additionally, the models need to incorporate social media and video activity. Marketers must make it a priority to systematically monitor social media interactions and use this valuable “listening/learning” to inform their online and offline media and creative messages. One of the biggest challenges will be to measure the sharing activity among social consumers, including online video ads and widgets, which can affect a marketer’s reach and engagement levels. Those who are able to connect all the dots will enjoy a significant competitive advantage.

5. Become Educated

While models can provide insight, the models themselves need to be shaped by insights that come from the real world—specifically, through market research that will tell you what online consumers are doing and what they are likely to do in the future. By arming yourself with information and trend data, you will be able to ask the right questions and design measurement systems and models that capitalize on real consumer behavior and attitudes.

“Data is useless unless it becomes currency for making a decision.”
—Rashid Tobaccowala, CEO, Denuo, as quoted in MediaPost, June 10, 2009

6. Take a Long-Term View

Remember there is no silver bullet. Hard work and careful planning will be necessary to reinvent online brand measurement and coordinate it seamlessly with offline measurement. There are no shortcuts to success.

7. Make a Commitment

Wherever you are in the online marketing ecosystem, make a commitment to improving online measurement for your brands, or those of your clients. While measurement is not the only thing that needs fixing in the online advertising industry, it is a huge obstacle to more ad dollars coming through the pipeline.