ComScore: Forget About Clicks

MediaPost Publications, October 2, 2009 — It's time for online marketers to forgo click-through rates for a better measure of success, according to new data from comScore in conjunction with media agency Starcom USA and behavioral targeting firm Tacoda.

Indeed, the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen, from 32% of Web users in July 2007 to only 16% in March 2009. Worse still, an even smaller core of consumers — representing just 8% of the Internet user base — accounts for the vast majority, or 85%, of all clicks.

"Marketers who attempt to optimize their advertising campaigns solely around the click are assigning no value to the 84 percent of Internet users who don't click on an ad," said Linda Anderson, comScore VP of marketing solutions and author of the... continue reading

Nielsen To Develop Online Planning Tool For UK

MediaPost Publications, September 29, 2009 — The Nielsen Company has been selected by UKOM, the UK Online Measurement body, as its official partner in creating the country's first online campaign planning tool.

Set to launch in January 2010, the UKOM Audience Planning System (APS) powered by Nielsen is intended to provide advertisers and agencies with the online reach and frequency metrics needed for media planning and buying.

Facebook Sets Deal to Provide Ad Data to Nielsen†

Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2009 — Facebook Inc. plans to announce a deal with online measurement company Nielsen Co., in a step to address advertisers' frustration with measuring how ads perform on the social network.Under the partnership, Facebook will begin polling its users about some of the display ads it runs on its site, such as a banner promoting a movie release.

Facebook will provide that data, including responses from those who didn't see an ad, to Nielsen, which will package it for advertisers, say the companies.

Omniture, comScore Unveil Partnership On Heels Of Adobe Acquisition

MediaPost Publications, September 21, 2009 — Omniture and comScore plan to unveil a partnership Monday that creates a service giving the online advertising industry a more comprehensive view of data to measure performance and digital audiences. The agreement combines Web site analytics data with audience measurement data, respectively, to provide advertisers and publishers with a unified measurement tool.

Media Dollars Shift to Digital in Downturn

Spending recovery will lag economic recovery

eMarketer, September 16, 2009 — The economic downturn is causing most marketers to decrease media spending budgets, and the remaining expenditures are shifting further toward digital, according to a Q2 2009 survey by Round2.

Nielsen on Notice: Industry Demands a Meatier Metric†

P&G, Unilever, Disney Form Coalition to Drive a Cross-Media Measure

Advertising Age, September 14, 2009 — The media and marketing business desperately needs a cross-platform measurement tool, and a gang of major players got together last week and let it be known that they're going to get one — with or without Nielsen, the longtime leader in tracking TV.

Study: Companies Focused On Marketing Accountability

MediaPost Publications, September 10, 2009 — Companies have stepped up their emphasis and focus on marketing accountability practices, according to a new survey by the Association of National Advertisers and Synovate's Marketing Management Analytics.

Tesco, British Grocer, Uses Weather to Predict Sales

New York Times, September 2, 2009 — Britain often conjures images of unpredictable weather, with downpours sometimes followed by sunshine within the same hour — several times a day.

Such randomness has prompted Tesco, the country’s largest grocery chain, to create its own weather team in hopes of better forecasting temperatures and how consumer demand changes with them. After three years of research, the six-person team has created its own software that calculates how shopping patterns change “for every degree of temperature and every hour of sunshine,” Tesco said last month.

Tesco expects the team’s forecasts to help it reduce costs and avoid wasting food.

A Meeting of the Minds†

How to Get CMOs and CFOs on the Same Page When It Comes to Digital Spending

Advertising Age, August 31, 2009 — I hear versions of the same conversations almost weekly. While they're not necessarily new conversations, the tenor of them has grown considerably tenser as a result of the struggling global economy. The conversations run something like this:

The chief financial officer says: "Before I spend any money in this environment, I need to know the impact of this investment. I need to see an ROI."

The CMO responds with: "It's not about ROI; it's about creating awareness. Having people understand our brand will create engagement, which will lead to revenue."

Time.com Looks For Cash In Social Net Real Estate

Time Tests Co-Branded Sponsorships

paidContent.org, August 31, 2009 — Time.com hopes to leverage the popularity of its Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages with advertisers by crafting co-branded sponsorships. Technology and engineering company Siemens is the first advertiser to try out Time.com’s “Stay Connected” program, which includes placement on the company’s social media outposts on those sites. The only social media site Time will be sharing revenue with is YouTube. John Cantarella, GM of Time.com, told paidContent, “The impressions in this campaign are on Time.com and we are only giving the sponsor a presence on TIME’s Facebook and Twitter pages—where it has 72,000 fans and about 1.4 million followers, respectively—as part of the overall campaign.”