Kellogg Bolsters Digital ROI as Online Push Continues†

Hires Online Firm Pure Visibility to Track Marketer's Web Efforts

Advertising Age, November 13, 2008 — Kellogg Co. has hired Pure Visibility, an internet marketing firm out of Ann Arbor, Mich., to apply Google Analytics to its websites. The package-food company has emphasized that digital will be a bigger piece of its advertising strategy in 2009.

Kellogg: Digital ROI Surpasses That of TV†

After Success With Special K, Marketer to Shift More Spending Online

Advertising Age, September 4, 2008 — The digital divide is narrowing for Kellogg Co., which today said its return on online investment for the Special K brand has surpassed that of broadcast TV over the past 18 months.

"It's still relatively early in our learning," Mark Baynes, chief marketing officer at the Battle Creek, Mich., company told the Lehman Bros. Back to School Consumer Conference during a discussion on how Kellogg is trying to increase advertising and marketing efficacy. "But analysis of the Special K initiative of the last 18 months showed digital media exceeding that of broadcast ROI."

Survey Finds CFOs Skeptical of Their Own Firms' ROI Claims†

ANA Confronts Lack of Confidence at Marketing Accountability Conference

Advertising Age, July 15, 2008 — Financial executives don't think there's much truth in advertising.

According to a new study, six in 10 financial executives believe their companies' marketing departments have an inadequate understanding of financial controls, and seven in 10 said their companies don't use marketing inputs and forecasts in financial guidance to Wall Street or in public disclosures.

Another Piece That Aims to Solve ROI Puzzle†

MediaVest Partners With TRA to Connect Dots Between TV Ads and Shopping Habits

Advertising Age, April 23, 2008 — Publicis Groupe's MediaVest is partnering with a market-research company to answer advertising's million-dollar question: Do TV ads make consumers go out and buy products?

TRA, a media market research company, has developed a new technology that matches the advertising households receive with the products those households actually buy.

The partnership comes as the precise measurability of online advertising is putting TV under increasing pressure to show marketers a return on their investment, and as marketers are demanding more metrics to justify spending on TV.

Point and Click—at Your TV

Backchannel takes a remote shot at that elusive prize: profitable interactive television

BusinessWeek, March 10, 2008 — Michael Kokernak has been unhealthily gripped by a very specific obsession for more than 10 years. Fortunately, his fixed stare is trained on something socially acceptable, even though it may not make for scintillating party chat.

Since 1997, Kokernak has immersed himself in the arcana of making advertising accountable, and, more recently, in how to fuse TV ads with the measurable, click-here-now aspects of the Web. Kokernak is the founder and co-CEO of Boston-based Backchannelmedia. The company peddles technology that, to oversimplify somewhat, flashes on TV ads and programs small onscreen tokens that are "clickable" with a standard remote control, à la Web ads.

K-C, Unilever Turn Down TV to Ramp Up ROI†

Giants Pare Spots, Add New-Media Approaches in Push for Efficiency

Advertising Age, February 25, 2008 — As proof that it's spending its marketing dollars wisely, Kimberly-Clark Chairman-CEO Thomas Falk told analysts last week that the company expects to spend only 46% of its marketing budget on TV this year, down from 60% in 2004.

If you looked two or three years ago, out of our top six consumer brands, TV would have ranked as the most popular channel for all six," Mr. Falk told attendees at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York last week. "Today, TV might be ranked as the best channel for only three of those brands."

Package-goods titan Unilever also is out to prove it can spend more effectively, in part by using TV more cannily.

Couch to Supermarket: Connecting Dots†

New Firm Will Match Data From Cable Boxes, Frequent-Shopper Cards

Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2008 — Web marketers can easily tell whether a particular consumer visited a specific site, when she visited, and whether she bought something. But despite a decades-long head start, television advertisers haven't been as successful connecting the shows people watch to the products they buy.

Now a new media research company, TRA — for "True ROI Accountability for Media" — is taking another crack at the problem. It merges data from people's cable set-top boxes with consumer-purchase databases, such as the information stores gather from frequent-shopper cards. For instance, a company could see whether households that watched an ad for its toothpaste later bought that brand of toothpaste.

Don't Overemphasize ROI as Single Measure of Success†

Variety Counts: It Takes More Than One Benchmark to Assess Overall Effectiveness

Advertising Age, February 4, 2008 — There is a fundamental problem with overemphasizing ROI as the single measure of marketing success: It is often impossible to accurately quantify the impact. Although the world of marketing has come a long way in terms of analytic capabilities, applying financial numbers to the marketing equation is not always possible or preferable.