Rethinking the Web: Just what is it we should be measuring, anyway?

In a previous Riger Update, guest columnist Marvin Nolan Moore offered a methodology for tracking Web site effectiveness…down to the fraction of a penny! Click-through is king, in so many words.

In many respects, Moore echoed a 1996 Wired magazine article, quoted in a New York Times article by Rob Walker (Aug. 27, 2001): “The Net is accountable. It is knowable. It is the highway leading marketers to their holy grail: single-source technology that can definitively tie the information consumers receive to the purchases they make.”

But now there’s a strong counter-current of thinking about measurability and accountability on the Web. In his Times piece on the “New Economy,” slate.com columnist Walker wrote further: “…measurability has not turned out to be the great strength of Internet advertising. It has turned out to be its most conspicuous weakness. The problem is that it is hard to prove no one is paying attention to a given television commercial. But it is easy to prove that practically nobody is clicking on a given banner ad, leading to the perception that most online ads do not work.”

Working with data from Jupiter Media Metrix, a popular provider of commercial Internet analysis, Walker added: “Some of the new methods are meant to be even more refined measurements, like so-called view-based conversions. These track, for instance, whether a Web surfer has merely seen—but not necessarily clicked on—an online Eddie Bauer ad before visiting the Eddie Bauer Web site and buying a sweater.  ….Toward the other extreme are new efforts to promote online advertising even when its results are not directly traceable to any sales at all.”

Walker observes that, after all is said and done, the best measurements of how well an online advertisement performs may perhaps be very similar to the traditional measurements of conventional advertising. That is, viewership studies (“Did they see my message on the Web?”) and awareness studies (“How well do they recognize my name as a result of my message?”).

In a similar vein, “…there is compelling evidence to suggest online advertising can be utilized as an effective branding tool in certain situations, with strengths in awareness metrics but weaker in persuasion metrics,” according to Scott Hays (interpreting research by Nicky Nyhan of Dynamic Logic and Tony Romeo of Strategic Dynamics) in “Where Does Online Succeed and Fail?” (Oct. 28, 2002 Advertising Age). “…only one metric has increased significantly over time: brand awareness,” Hays notes.

No doubt about it, advertising on the Web is still a force to be reckoned with, and growing in importance all the time. The point is, we may need to treat it, not less like, but more like other advertising tools, as far as measuring effectiveness.

For further quick reads (including an opposing view), check out these other articles on www.riger.com:

In Search of the Cyber-world El Dorado, by Marvin Nolan Moore

The Why and How of ‘e-Marketing’ by Josh Greene

Fourteen Questions to Start Your Web Site Makeover — the Riger Web Audit, by our own Steve Johnson, VP Client Services

For a copy of the Rob Walker column in the New York Times, or the Scott Hays piece in Ad Age, contact us via e-mail.

-- TOP -- Interactive Home -- Knowledge Base Home --