ContextWeb’s Brain Exchange: What Do You Want To Measure?
By Greg Jarboe
The president and co-founder of SEO-PR, a search engine optimization firm and public relations agency.
Peter Drucker, the famous author, management consultant and university professor, once wrote, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” And he was right. So, asking some of the top interactive agencies, “What can you measure,” is like asking them, “What can you manage?”
Now, all interactive agencies can measure impressions and clicks.
This means they can manage more than most traditional agencies, which can only measure impressions. But, if you want to identify the leading interactive agencies from the ones that are followers, you need to ask a harder question than “What can you measure?”
You need to ask, “What do you want to measure?”
This implies that there’s something that they want to manage, but haven’t been able to up to now. Admitting that there is something that you don’t know and being able to articulate what you want to find out is what really separates the early adopters from the later adopters. It means that the innovators know what they don’t know in addition to knowing what everyone else knows. This puts them in a position to find new answers sooner, rather than later than their competitors.
So, in our Brain Exchange for the ContextWeb Internet Advertising Blog over the next few weeks, some of the top interactive agencies will discuss what they want to measure.
Now, my SEO firm and PR agency doesn’t buy online advertising. We provide organic search engine optimization and Internet public relations services. So, why am I participating in this particular Brain Exchange?
I believe that most marketing innovation comes from actively seeking out information about marketing innovations in adjacent fields. In other words, if there is something that innovative interactive advertising agencies want to measure, then innovative SEO firms and PR agencies should want to be able to measure it, too.
This may not sound like rocket science, but it is what I’ve learned from social science textbooks, like Diffusion of Innovations.
I’ve also learned that it isn’t “social” to merely listen in to other people’s conversations, but it is social to participate in them.
So, let me toss an item into the “stone soup” we’re cooking up this month to share my answer the question, “What do you want to measure?”
ContextWeb has just announced that ADSDAQ will be the first online advertising exchange to implement the comScore Campaign Metrix API for Ad Networks and Publishers. The API enables interactive advertising agencies to use comScore Campaign Metrix solutions to prove the effectiveness of their online ad campaigns on ContextWeb’s premium ad exchange.
Campaign Metrix provides post-buy analysis for ADSDAQ’s advertising campaigns and delivers metrics familiar to the offline world, such as reach, frequency, and gross ratings points (GRPs); person-level demographics of the consumers who were reached; and a true count of unique consumers.
So, what do I want to measure? I want to measure the same things.
Just as today’s online advertising has moved well beyond just impressions and clicks, so do tomorrow’s organic search engine optimization and Internet public relations. If ad agencies and their clients need to know the impact of their online campaigns and how this compares to their offline campaigns, then SEO firms, PR agencies and their clients need to know this, as well.
If an interactive agency can now measure the impact on consumers’ Internet activity, including lift in website visitation, engagement, and trademark search activity, as well as competitive share of mind analysis, then I want to be able to measure that, too.
Now, can I measure this today? No. Would I be interested in using something as innovative as ADSDAQ and comScore Campaign Metrix to show the effectiveness of my SEO and PR campaigns? Yes, and the sooner the better.
-- Guest Blogger
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