…and they don’t see your ad. Did it impact your brand?
Back at it in SF.
Which tool is being used for ad effectiveness research can help answer the age-old, “If a Tree Falls in a Forest” riddle that relates to ad effectiveness in online media. Such online research has come along way since studying it with Professor Stasch back at Loyola’s GSB.
A question from Cindy on the WAA forum that struck close to home:
“Can anyone suggest a product that is similar to Dynamic Logic. Dynamic
Logic is a good product, but there may be certain campaigns or
initiatives that would be better served by a similar vendor.
Any ideas are welcome.”
At GSF, we found that recruitment for media research is an ongoing challenge spanning study design, questionnaire development, funding, media partner alignment, statstical significance, recruitment technicalities and results preparation.
Especially thorny is achieving statistical significance when recruiting a target audience that is the least amenable to being surveyed. However, clients need this information often for internal financial modeling as well as the marketing value. Some findings:
- After three quarters of Dynamic Logic (a Millward-Brown and therefore WPP company like GSF) and a pure-intercept basis; InsightExpress offers a similar approach; it was decided that we pass on more of the same.
- ComScore offers a combined panel-based and intercept service leveraging similar control vs. exposure methods (BrandMetrix & CampaignMetrix). Sounds very promising.
- Nielsen offers a solution in this vein also but has a somewhat smaller (but growing) panel; they did offer an interesting post-exposure email option that was novel.
ComScore shows alot of potential for a number of reasons: one interesting by-product of the panel-based approach is the potential to understand the context of what users were doing before and after being exposed to an advertising message – in addition to clickers. For example, what is the likelihood of a trademarked or category search or visiting the target brand’s Web site after being exposed? Turns out quite high.
For some background on what you can do with this (and handy industry benchmarks) be sure to check out their “Whither the Click” white paper from last December.
Good luck Cindy!
