What Propels Intent to Purchase?

Earlier this week, a major radio group in Chicago pitched me an internet package for one of my clients. During the pitch, I began to realize how internet marketers are measuring success in ways that have no direct relationship to my client’s goals.

photo credit: myuibe

Typical internet sales presentations focus on click-through, unique visitors, and ad impressions. These numbers are easily quantifiable because computer technology drives the medium. But what do numbers tell me about how an association with their brand will propel intent to purchase from my client?

Take my favorite Old Media example, Wine Spectator. This magazine targets a very specific audience with very specific demographical parameters. Their readers have money, love to travel, and are passionate about wine and the finer points of life. How do I know? I look at the advertising.

Sure, an account executive can provide me with a dead forest of data, but doesn’t the quality of the advertising tell you more than the number of subscribers?

For example, Wine Spectator and PC Gamer have about the same number of subscribers, according to MDS. Would you even dare say those magazines are designed for the same reader?

So how can a brand manager compare one internet site to another solely upon impressions?

I don’t want circulation numbers, or in the case of the internet, unique visitors. It is in the best interest of my client that I market his brand in an arena that improves brand awareness, intent to purchase, and “favorability” by association.

Apparently, I am not alone in this idea.

The Online Publishers Association released a study earlier this summer that assessed 80 of the biggest branding campaigns across 200 of the most trafficked internet sites. The results, detailed in the report The Silent Click: Building Brands Online, found “that measuring consumers exposed to an advertiser message in terms of their search activities associated with that brand, their visitation to the advertisers’ site and finally their e-commerce and retail spending activities, is a smart formula for getting an important view into display ad effectiveness.”

Search + Site Visitation + e-Commerce Spending [measured over time to account for latency effects] = a smart formula for measuring display advertising effectiveness.

Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones, warned that even the advertisers which were initially lured by impressive clicks and page impressions are now becoming more discriminating.

Consider yourself warned.

Here are other articles I have written on this topic:

• New Campaign for Will County Health Department
• Network Upfront Ends; Prices Down
• Choosing the Proper Lure for Your Audience
• U.S. Olympic Committee to Launch TV Network in 2010
• Advertising Picks Up, Recession Nears End?
• Newspaper Revenue Trend Line Reconsidered
• Will Online Ad Revenue Beat Newspapers in 2011?
• AdAge: Banks That Spend, Win
• Is Radio Advertising Effective?
• New Television Spot for Appellate Court Judge Mary Schostok