emarketer online brand measurement report

56
Introduction In 2009, US advertisers will spend $4.7 billion on display ads, and another $3.1 billion on other branding-oriented ads, including rich media and video. But are they getting their money’s worth? Does online brand measurement even work? Do marketers have the metrics they need to connect the dots—both within online platforms and between online and offline media? Authored by eMarketer CEO and co-founder Geoff Ramsey, this special report addresses these questions and many more. A Look Inside Total Access: This report gives you a sample of the premium content that is exclusive to eMarketer Total Access subscribers.For more information on what Total Access can do for your business, day after day, visit www.emarketer.com, or contact us at 212-763-6010 or 800-405-0844 (toll-free). More Available Online We encourage you to view this special report online at www.emarketer.com/brandmeasurement for access to videos, in-depth interviews and full survey results (courtesy of InsightExpress). On the report Website, you can also join the conversation on this important topic by contributing comments. ® Online Brand Measurement: Connecting the Dots June 2009 Geoffrey Ramsey, CEO & Co-Founder [email protected] Digital Intelligence Copyright ©2009 eMarketer, Inc. All rights reserved. Special Report

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Page 1: eMarketer Online Brand Measurement Report

Introduction

In 2009, US advertisers will spend $4.7 billion on

display ads, and another $3.1 billion on other

branding-oriented ads, including rich media and

video. But are they getting their money’s worth?

Does online brand measurement even work? Do

marketers have the metrics they need to connect

the dots—both within online platforms and

between online and offline media?

Authored by eMarketer CEO and co-founder Geoff Ramsey, thisspecial report addresses these questions and many more.

A Look Inside Total Access: This report gives you a sample ofthe premium content that is exclusive to eMarketer Total Accesssubscribers. For more information on what Total Access can do foryour business, day after day, visit www.emarketer.com, or contactus at 212-763-6010 or 800-405-0844 (toll-free).

More Available Online

We encourage you to view this special report online

at www.emarketer.com/brandmeasurement for

access to videos, in-depth interviews and full

survey results (courtesy of InsightExpress).On the

report Website, you can also join the conversation

on this important topic by contributing comments.

®

Online BrandMeasurement:Connecting the Dots

June 2009

Geoffrey Ramsey,CEO & [email protected]

Digital Intelligence Copyright ©2009 eMarketer, Inc. All rights reserved.

Special Report

Page 2: eMarketer Online Brand Measurement Report

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 2

Geoff Ramsey: Why This Report?

Measurement means different things to different

people—but most can agree that in business,

measurement is vital to long-term success.

I’ll never forget my first experience with measurement.When Iwas 12 years old, my family moved to the UK, exposing me to anew school system and a decidedly different way of measuringstudent performance. Instead of the generalized feedback I wasused to in Michigan, such as “needs to try harder,” the UK studentswere ranked from 1 through n (where n = however-many-students-were-in-the-class). Granted, it was a blunt measure.Andat the end of the first marking period, I was ranked last in everysingle subject, from Latin to mathematics. Ouch.

Remarkably, though, this measurement system had a profoundeffect on me. I started paying attention in class and generallyworked like a dog. By the end of the last marking period, my rankhad elevated to No. 1 or No. 2 in each class.

Could the online advertising industry benefit from a similartransformation if better brand measurement systems were put inplace? Does the industry have the right metrics to be able toconnect the dots—both within online platforms and between onlineand offline media? That’s what this report was designed to uncover.

Online brand measurement has been on my mind for some timenow.After moderating industry panels with session titles such as“Fixing the Measurement Mess” or “Is Data Friend or Enemy?” itbecame clear that we had some major challenges to overcome.

That feeling was confirmed when eMarketer commissionedInsightExpress to conduct a poll of industry stakeholders. On ascale of 1 (we’re still in the Dark Ages) to 10 (we’ve got this allfigured out), a majority (51%) rated the current state of onlinebrand measurement at 5 or below. Ouch again.

This report was made possible by contributions from manyindividuals, who offered their time, expertise and razor-sharpthinking on an incredibly complicated topic, including many of myhard-working colleagues at eMarketer. In particular, I want to thanksenior analyst David Hallerman, who shored up my original draftwith much-needed improvements; writer/editor Tobi Elkin, whoconducted more than two dozen high-level interviews; and EvelynMajewski, who analyzed and provided a contextual summary ofthe InsightExpress poll of industry professionals.

I am also grateful for the commitment and friendship of theindustry leaders who agreed to be interviewed or come into our offices for video sessions. I offer special thanks to David Smith of Mediasmith, a legend in online measurement, who acted as a sounding board and sanity check for many of my points and conclusions.

The process of writing this report was like absorbing the collective consciousness of the online ad industry, and itconvinced me to change my views on a number of key issues. Ihope it opens your mind to some new ideas and provides a forumfor the industry to move forward on this important subject ofonline brand measurement.

Please take the time to share your comments and thoughts.Collectively, we can begin to connect the dots—and maybe wecan move to an 8 or 9 out of 10 sooner rather than later.

Geoffrey RamseyCEO, Co-Founder, eMarketer

Page 3: eMarketer Online Brand Measurement Report

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 3

Letter from Our Sponsor,Datran Media

When I first heard that eMarketer was publishing

a study dedicated to online measurement, I got

excited, because I felt that the timing couldn’t

be any better.

We are witnessing a very interesting period in the industry whereadvertisers are no longer simply buying media on Web sites toreach a particular audience, but instead are actually targetingusers.The explosion of exchanges and behavioral data targetinghas suddenly made the term “remnant” important and sexy. Let’sface it, this is not a just a trend, but rather a clear movementtowards leveraging the plethora of data that differentiates theInternet from any other form of media. Even when advertisers buyfrom an individual site, they are now expecting to target specificusers with relevant demographics or behavior.Although thisappears to be a subtle switch, it actually has a profound effect onthe industry, especially when it comes to measurement.Thinkabout it. The measurement tools that exist on the Web today werecreated to address the desire to determine the most popular sitesby attempting to count the number of unique visits to individualsites on a monthly basis.These tools were not really developed toprovide valid insights into the user behind the browser.

Perhaps in the early days of the Internet when people werefocused on buying homepages or sponsorships, knowing themost popular sports-related Web site was actually relevant. But letme ask you a question, if you are only buying four million uniqueimpressions, does it really matter whether the site reaches 20 or30 million visitors a month? Although instinctively most of us wantto say yes, chances are the answer is no.Advertisers should beshifting from asking what site is the most popular to wondering“who specifically am I reaching?”, “is this who I am intending toreach?” and “what is the impact on my brand?”

Unfortunately the industry is still stuck in a rut over countingmethodologies.Yet at the end of the day, the only figures thattypically matter come from an advertiser’s third party ad server, asthis is what determines the money actually spent on advertising.Until the debate switches from unique user counting to theaccuracy and quality of data about the individuals exposed to andinteracting with the ad campaign, we will be holding back thepotential of the industry. Not to say that the number of monthlyvisitors isn’t at all relevant to publishers or advertisers, but let’s putthat challenge into perspective and focus resources on movingthe market forward with the type of audience measurement thattoday’s marketer truly needs.

I trust that this timely report will give us all a lot of food for thoughtand we are delighted to be sponsoring it. No one knows exactlywhat measurement will consist of in five years, but I guarantee itwill evolve greatly from what exists today.This study shouldprovide us with not only the current challenges, but also a hint ofthings to come. Enjoy the report and let the debates begin!

Sincerely,

Scott C. KnollSVP Display and GM Aperture Product Group, Datran Media

Page 4: eMarketer Online Brand Measurement Report

Aperture answers the questions every digitalmarketer is asking:

Am I reaching the right audience? Who is responding to my campaign? Should I be targeting new audiences?

To understand who your audience truly is, you need a reporting tool that is designed for the 21st century digital marketer. To learn more about Aperture, please visit datranmedia.com/insight

Advertisers and marketers have long searched, with mixed results, for proof that their campaigns are e�ective. For the interactive industry, integrity in audience measurement is a fundamental necessity. After all, accurate reporting and transpar-ency is critical when planning future media buys, segmenting audiences, and optimizing marketing mixes.

The methodologies that most media is measured by today are over 70 years old! Panel-based research was initially developed to help radio advertisers understand how many listeners were exposed to their campaign. Ironically, not much has changed in the world of media measurement. Although in recent years, ISP-based measurement has made some attempts to improve the way audiences are quanti�ed.

Clearly, online advertisers need deeper insights into who they're reaching. In today’s competitive atmosphere, where targeting very speci�c audiences is increasingly important, the old-world methodologies are becoming less relevant.

With more and more marketers relying on analytics to shape their campaigns, new tools are being developed for today’s online advertiser, as evidenced by the recent launch of Datran Media’s Aperture. Aperture is the �rst and only audience reporting tool that delivers consumer pro�les across all digital media, based on third-party veri�ed household-level data. Anonymously combining veri�ed o�ine data with the online activity of over 100 million consumers, this rich data provides unprecedented insights into the audience that is exposed to, has responded to, and is converting on an advertiser’s campaign.

Do you currently leverage audience analytics? (% of respondents)

Yes 76%

No 26%

Source: Datran Media, “Third Annual Marketing & Media Survey,” January 2009

Verified consumer data is the key to accurate reporting

Current methodologies are outdated

Most research sample sizes are statistically insignificant

Audiences need to be measured at the campaign andcreative level, not just site level

Telling You about Your AudienceWhat are Analytics Really

Aperture measureshousehold- level

demographics across the entiremedia chain – from impressions

to clicks to conversions.

A Datran Media Solution

How crucial do you feel analytics can be in dictating future adcampaigns? (% of respondents)

Source: Datran Media, “Third Annual Marketing & Media Survey,” January 2009

Not at All .8%

Very 69.2%

Somewhat30%

pressions indexed to internet

Adult Age (all) Sampling Percent 62%

86-99 yrs

76-85 yrs

66-75 yrs

56-65 yrs

46-55 yrs

36-45 yrs

26-35 yrs

18-25 yrs

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 2

impressions clicks conv

19,312,785 41,228 2,

INFLUENCE

DEMOGRAPHICS

College Grad36-45 yrs (Adult Age)Females 35-44 yrsMales 35-44 yrs

(share of impressions)

FINANCE

$250k (Net Worth)

Bank Card$100k (Income)

HOUS

1-2

1

ADVERTISEMENT

Page 5: eMarketer Online Brand Measurement Report

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

More Available Online 1

Geoff Ramsey:Why This Report? 2

Letter from Our Sponsor, Datran Media 3

Table of Contents 5

Background: Factors that Contribute to theMeasurement Issue 5What Does ‘Measurement’ Mean? 5

Putting Measurement into Perspective 6

The Accountability Factor 7

What Spending Trends Say About Online BrandMeasurement 10Total Online Spending—Slow but Positive Growth Ahead 10

Search versus Display Trends 11

Dollar Trends Don’t Tell the Whole Story 14

Beyond Banners: Other Online Formats Will Boost OverallBranding Dollars 15

Drill Down:What Are the Problems? 16A General Apathy Toward Branding 16

A Preoccupation with Search, at the Expense of Branding 18

An Addiction to Clicks 21

Do Traditional Measurement Techniques Work for NewMedia? 22

Integration Is Hard When Data Is Locked in Silos 23

Too Much Information,Too Much Complexity 24

Current Measurement Models Have Limitations 25

Measurement of Social and Video Are Even Further Behind 26

Data Spotlight: How Online Brand AdvertisingCan Influence Every Step Along the ConsumerPurchase Funnel 27How Display Ads Impact Brand Metrics 28

Integrating Search and Display Ad Measurements 29

How Display Ads Drive Site Traffic 30

How Display Ads Impact Online Sales 30

How Display Ads Influence Offline Purchases 31

Three Factors for Online Branding Success 33

Working Toward the Solutions for Online BrandMeasurement 35Big Picture: Five Broad Approaches 35

It All Starts with Marketing Objectives 36

The Need for Uniform Standards 36

Integrate Online and Offline Measurement and Metrics 39

Embrace Traditional Media Metrics 39

Get Smart About Attribution Modeling 42

Building New Measurement Models for Social and VideoEnvironments 44

Unraveling Consumer Engagement Metrics 46

Next Steps:A Seven-Point Plan 47

Endnotes 49

Related Information and Links 52Contact 55

Report Contributors 55

eMarketer Total Access: How to Make BetterDigital Business Decisions 55

®

Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 5

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 6

Background: Factors thatContribute to the MeasurementIssue

US advertisers will spend $4.7 billion on display

ads in 2009, and another $3.1 billion on other

branding-oriented ads, including rich media and

video. But are they getting their money’s worth?

Do they have the right metrics, and are they able

to connect the dots, both within online platforms

and between online and offline media? Is online

brand measurement even a problem that needs

to be fixed?

This special report will seek answers to these questions, and many more.

“It’s time for digital media to grow up and forclients who are running full-on marketingcampaigns to really understand how theircampaigns are performing if they spend $5million or $1 million or $800,000 online,across various sites and fragmentedaudiences.” —Curt Hecht, president, Publicis Groupe’sVivaKi Nerve Center, in an interview with eMarketer,April 22, 2009

What Does ‘Measurement’ Mean?In exploring online brand measurement today, marketers need tobe careful to separate out its two basic components:

■ How successfully and efficiently did I reach my intended target consumer?

■ Did my advertising campaign influence the consumer’sattitudes, perceptions or behaviors associated with the brand?

“One question is about ad effectiveness, and the other is thecurrency that is bought and sold,” said Young-Bean Song, seniordirector of analytics and the Atlas Institute for MicrosoftAdvertising, in an interview with eMarketer. “In an ideal world,those would be the same thing.That’s one of the good thingsabout direct response advertising, where you’re paying somebodyfor a sale that occurs on their network or you’re paying for a click.Both the currency and the measure of effectiveness are the samething. But in the world of branding, things get a lot more abstract.You still have to pay for something, but you’re not going to pay forbranding ad effectiveness.”

Putting Measurement into PerspectiveIn April 2009, eMarketer used online survey companyInsightExpress to poll 37 high-level, highly knowledgeablemarketing professionals with expertise in the field of mediameasurement.The purpose was to gauge their opinions on thestate of online brand measurement.

To get a level set on the degree to which measurement is seen as a significant barrier to the growth of online advertising, therespondents were asked whether they agreed with the following statement:

“Other than the economy, brand measurement is thesingle biggest obstacle holding back the growth of online advertising.”

A little under one-half of respondents,or 43.2%,agreed thatmeasurement is the major obstacle aside from the overall economy.

104486

But while 56.8% of respondents disagreed with the statement,their answers for alternative obstacles varied. In general, theycentered around three broad themes. But as this report makesclear, each of these obstacles is, in fact, an integral part of the coremeasurement problem.Taken together, they pinpoint the keychallenges facing the industry.The following quotations providesome elaboration.

Obstacle:Too much focus on direct response

■ “Overinfluence of direct response metrics. Perhaps these aretwo sides of the same coin but still, today, there is a large school of thought that direct response is the basic benefit ofonline advertising.”

■ “A myopic focus on direct response ads and immediategratification.”

Disagree56.8%

Agree43.2%

US Marketing Executives Who Agree that BrandMeasurement Is Holding Back the Growth of OnlineAdvertising, April 2009 (% of respondents)

Note: n=37Source: eMarketer, "Online Brand Measurement Survey" conducted byInsightExpress, June 2009

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 7

Background: Factors that Contribute to the Measurement Issue

Obstacle: Lack of creativity

■ “A lack of CMO and marketing creative focus on online efforts,and true measurement of buying influences.”

■ “Brand measurement is certainly one area that needs toimprove, but also improved creative and CMOs’ understandingof the platform are also a priority.”

Obstacle: Lack of understanding about how digital works

■ “Understanding how online fits in with other media.”

■ “Vision, imagination, ideas, experience.We are still in an earlystage of adoption for many companies, where many marketersjust don’t have the bandwidth or experience to make digitalwork, let alone sync with the rest of their marketing programs.”

■ “The problem is subjective, not quantitative: It is aboutexperience with the medium and belief in its virtues.”

To further quantify where the online ad industry is withmeasurement today, the InsightExpress poll also askedrespondents to rate the measurement issue on a continuum from1 to 10, where 1 is “We are in the Dark Ages,” and 10 is “We’ve gotthis thing totally figured out.” Not a single one of the 37respondents rated online ad measurement a 9 or 10. Only 16.2%of respondents rated measurement a 7 or higher, and just underone-half rated it at least a 6.

The bottom line:A slight majority (51.3%) believed onlinemeasurement is at a grade of 5 or below. Clearly, the interactive adindustry has a problem on its hands.

104488

If there is any solace, it’s in the slight improvement over the years.When asked how they would have rated online measurement fiveyears ago, a whopping 78% of respondents said they would haverated it a 4 or lower, with nearly one-third (29.7%) rating it apathetic 2.

104492

Looking to the future, respondents gave the industry an average ofthree to five years before online measurement would attain ascore of 8 or above.

In One Word, Describe Online MeasurementToday

In the informal poll eMarketer conducted among industryinsiders, we asked them, “What single word or phrasewould you use to describe the current state of onlineadvertising measurement?” The answers were telling—strongly reinforcing the idea that the online ad industryhas a long road ahead.

US Marketing Executives' Ratings* of the State ofOnline Advertising Measurement, April 2009 (% ofrespondents)

10 0.0%

9 0.0%

8 2.7%

7 13.5%

6 32.4%

5 18.9%

4 13.5%

3 16.2%

2 2.7%

1 0.0%

Note: n=37; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding; *on a scaleof 1-10, where 1="We are in the Dark Ages" and 10="We've got this thingtotally figured out"Source: eMarketer, "Online Brand Measurement Survey" conducted byInsightExpress, June 2009

104488 www.eMarketer.com

US Marketing Executives' Ratings* of the State ofOnline Advertising Measurement Five Years Ago, April2009 (% of respondents)

10 0.0%

9 0.0%

8 0.0%

7 0.0%

6 8.1%

5 13.5%

4 24.3%

3 18.9%

2 29.7%

1 5.4%

Note: n=37; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding; *on a scaleof 1-10, where 1="We are in the Dark Ages" and 10="We've got this thingtotally figured out"Source: eMarketer, "Online Brand Measurement Survey" conducted byInsightExpress, June 2009

104492 www.eMarketer.com

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 8

Background: Factors that Contribute to the Measurement Issue

The Accountability FactorEven before the recession, marketers were under tremendouspressure to better account for their advertising outlays.Thedownturn only reinforced and accelerated the need to set specificmarketing goals and carefully measure results from ad campaigns.

“Marketers have been challenged to be more accountable byCEOs who are looking for shareholder return and value,” said BobLiodice, the president and CEO of the Association of NationalAdvertisers, in an interview with eMarketer. “The challenge formarketing is: ‘Prove to me that marketing works. Prove to me thatno matter how you slice it, the investments are paying back inboth short- and long-term deliverables.’”

Many studies underscore the accountability mandate formarketing, including a 2009 survey by the Lenskold Group andMarketSphere in which 65% of marketers worldwide said thatCEOs and CFOs are demanding to see ROI as a part of securingbudgets for marketing initiatives. Seventy-nine percent of themarketers felt that the need to measure, analyze and reportmarketing effectiveness was greater in 2009 than in previous years.

Another 2009 survey, from JupiterResearch and Verse Group, foundthat achieving measurable ROI on marketing efforts was the No.1priority of US marketers for 2009.Second on their list was developingmarketing programs that integrate online and traditional media.

emarketer_2000584_102141

A study by Heidrick & Struggles of 111 US senior executives foundthat return on marketing investment was the highest-rankedmarketing tactic in terms of importance to the company’s growthobjectives, rating a 4.05 on a scale of 1 to 5. Notably, online displayads were way down on the priority list, rating a paltry 2.86 out of 5.Executives’ satisfaction with online display ads was similarly poor,at 3.07. However, satisfaction levels with social networking tools(2.75) and video ads (2.65) were far worse.

emarketer_2000584_103679

Leading Priorities for US Marketers in 2009 (% ofrespondents)

Achieving measurable ROI on my marketing efforts

50%

Developing marketing programs that integrate online andtraditional media

43%

Translating the brand experience across different touchpoints

32%

Cutting marketing budgets without cutting performance

31%

Optimizing our portfolio of brands

26%

Selecting better methods to uncover relevant consumer insights

23%

Measuring brand effectiveness

20%

Refreshing our brand's image

19%

Evolving our brand as the company's business strategy evolves

18%

Building a corporate culture rooted in our brand

17%

Note: n=101Source: JupiterResearch and Verse Group, "CMO Priorities for 2009,"February 2009

102141 www.eMarketer.com

Satisfaction Level of US* Senior Executives RegardingTheir Company's Effectiveness at Developing SelectMarketing Tactics, November-December 2008 (scale of 1-5**)

Publishing tools–Webinars3.96

Research and analysis–online surveys3.25

Research and analysis–Website activity analysis3.14

Promotions–contests/sweepstakes3.11

Publishing tools–e-mail newsletters3.11

Websites/applications–microsites3.07

Advertising–online display ads3.07

Research and analysis–return on marketing investment (ROMI)analysis

3.07

SEO–pay-per-click search ads3.05

Collaboration and process tools–project management/marketingprocess tools

3.00SEO

3.00

SEO–search-related landing pages2.96

Promotions–gaming2.96

Partner tools–supplier/customer intranets2.93

Publishing tools–blogs2.75

Websites/applications–social networking tools2.75

Websites/applications–e-commerce sites2.69

Collaboration and process tools–customer relationshipmanagement (CRM) (sales process)

2.68

Advertising–video ads (e.g., on YouTube)2.65

Advertising–mobile ads2.58

Note: n=111; *90% of respondents are US-based; **1=not satisfied and5=very satisfiedSource: Heidrick & Struggles, "The Digital Marketing Standard," provided toeMarketer, April 20, 2009

103679 www.eMarketer.com

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 9

Background: Factors that Contribute to the Measurement Issue

Again, the growing pull toward more accountability in marketing isonly reinforced by the severe economic climate. In the CMO Council’sannual “Marketing Outlook 2009”report among 650 marketingprofessionals worldwide, fully one-half said they were cutting theirmarketing budgets this year.As Liz Miller,VP of programs andoperations at the CMO Council, said in the April 6,2009, issue of BtoBmagazine,“Everything we have seen and possibly predicted was thata typical knee-jerk reaction to the recession would happen—budgetswould be slashed across the board and companies would look atmarketing as if it were a line item that must be removed immediately.”

When marketers in the CMO Council survey were asked whichmedia elements would see their budgets increased by more than5%, 33% of respondents cited interactive/Web, 25% indicatedsearch marketing and 23% named social media.

“There is an increase in those programs andmedia options that will have an ROI that canbe measured and provide direct engagementwith customers.” —Liz Miller,VP of programs andoperations,CMO Council, in BtoB magazine,April 6, 2009

Where Is Digital on the Accountability Front?The marketing accountability mandate extends to every form ofmedia, including the Internet. But while the Web, in general, isperceived as highly accountable, the actual usage and success ofmeasurement programs depends heavily on marketers’ objectives.

Most marketers have a handle on measuring and calculating ROIfor their search campaigns, which tend to be focused on short-term, direct response results. Far fewer have mastered the art(and science) of assessing the impact of their branding efforts,which tend to have a longer-term focus and are much harder andmore complex to measure.

But the industry is gradually waking up to the fact that marketers andtheir agencies have been overemphasizing search whilesimultaneously devaluing their online branding efforts—largelybecause of inadequate measurement tools and platforms. In theaggregate,branding-oriented ads today account for slightly less thanone-third (31.5%) of total online advertising dollars spent in the US.

“I think if we came to an agreement on how abrand campaign influences a directresponse campaign and understood howdisplay advertising impacts search, thatwould be a game-changer. It would changethe way our clients buy online media.”—Jeff Lanctot, chief strategy officer, Razorfish, in aninterview with eMarketer,April 28, 2009

“This recession is having a dislocationimpact. It is causing advertisers to lookmore closely at the Internet because of thecost savings they might have [versus] ifeverything economically was fine. [TheInternet’s] growth is slowing, [but] it’sgaining share.” —Gian Fulgoni, chairman and co-founder, comScore, in an interview with eMarketer,April15, 2009

Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. conducted a study in June 2008 andfound that only 20% of marketing executives worldwide claimed touse quantitative analytical techniques to optimize their onlinemarketing efforts. Most used subjective—or gut—measures.

In a more recent November 2008 survey by integrated marketingsolutions provider Alterian, 47% of the 1,545 marketers andagencies polled said they used analytics to measure their onlinecampaigns. Despite the obvious vested interest here, the Alteriansurvey suggests a positive trend for marketer adoption of analytics.

More evidence that progress is being made for measuring the ROIof online advertising comes from a series of surveys amongmarketers conducted by PROMO magazine between 2007 and2009. In 2009, the Internet was deemed more profitable on an ROIbasis than traditional media by 34% of respondents—up from21.6% in 2008 and 25.9% in 2007; only 7.4% felt the Internet wasless profitable than traditional media in 2009.

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 10

Background: Factors that Contribute to the Measurement Issue

103776

Looking specifically at the data analytics side, Forrester Researchreported in May 2009 that over the next five years, US companieswill more than double their aggregate spending on Web analytics,including data analysis of advertising campaign performance.Theresearch firm sees such spending growing from $421 million in2009 to $953 million by 2014.

“It’s sort of a chicken or egg problem in thatmeasurement is expensive so it’s prudent tomeasure only big campaigns on majorinitiatives. So until more money’s spentonline for branding, the measurement’sgoing to lag. If the measurement and metricslag, how can we expect the offline dollars topour in?” —Jeff Lanctot, chief strategy officer, Razorfish,in an interview with eMarketer,April 28, 2009

What Spending Trends Say AboutOnline Brand Measurement

Spending trends by advertisers tell another side

of the story about the state of online branding

and its measurement.

Total Online Spending—Slow but Positive Growth AheadLike in every other media category, growth in online advertisingspending is slowing. However, while traditional media—television,radio, magazines and (especially) newspapers—are experiencingcataclysmic, double-digit declines, Internet spending is slowingfrom a growth rate of more than 25% to about 4.5%. In fact,eMarketer sees online spending growth remaining positivethroughout the duration of this recession. By year-end 2009, onlinead spending will be just under the $25 billion mark.

102197

For additional information on the above chart, see Endnote102197 | 104363 | 104366 in the Endnotes section.

eMarketer’s projection of 4.5% growth for US online advertising in2009 is supported by a wide variety of independent sources, frommedia and research firms to investment banks.Although a fewsources point to marginal declines, most predict online adspending growth will remain positive.

Interactive vs. Traditional Marketing ROI According toUS Marketers, 2007-2009 (% of respondents)

More profitable

25.9%

21.6%

34.0%

Equally profitable

16.0%

11.5%

13.9%

Less profitable

8.4%

4.7%

7.4%

Do not measure

14.4%

10.1%

9.0%

Do not know

27.8%

39.2%

28.7%

Does not apply

7.6%

10.1%

7.0%

2007 2008 2009

Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to roundingSource: PROMO magazine, "2009 Promo Interactive Marketing Survey"conducted by Penton Research, April 1, 2009

103776 www.eMarketer.com

US Online Advertising Spending Growth, 2007-2013 (%change)

2007 25.6%

2008 10.6%

2009 4.5%

2010 9.4%

2011 10.8%

2012 13.5%

2013 10.4%

Source: eMarketer, April 2009

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 11

What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand Measurement

104394

For additional information on the above chart, seeEndnote 104394 in the Endnotes section.

As an early indicator of how these full-year 2009 projections areplaying out, the IAB reported in June that online ad spending wasdown by 5% in Q1. eMarketer benchmarks its future projectionson IAB reports, which are conducted by accounting firmPricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Notably, eMarketer predicts aslight uptick in online ad spending growth during the second halfof 2009.

Surveys among marketers—the ones spending the money—confirm this online growth trend. In an Advertiser Perceptionsstudy among 1,599 advertisers and agencies, conducted in April2009, just over one-half (51%) said they were increasing theironline budgets over the next six months.While that is positive, it isdown from 72% just one year ago.

Particularly in this harsh economic environment, any increases inonline advertising spending will likely come at the expense oftraditional media budgets. In a worldwide study by McKinsey inJune 2008, a majority of marketers (55%) said they were cuttingtheir traditional media budgets precisely in order to fund moredigital efforts. Several even more recent surveys corroborate thismigration from traditional to digital.

But not all ad formats in the online sector are trending in the samedirection. Spending on display ads, which usually serve amarketer’s longer-term branding objectives, is headed downward.Conversely, spending on search, which is usually considered adirect response vehicle designed to achieve immediate results, isholding steady.

Search versus Display TrendsBy year-end 2008, search had grown to account for fully 45% of allonline advertising spending in the US.The current economicclimate will only accelerate this trend, with the result thatmarketers will spend nearly 49% of their online budgets onsearch—primarily for its direct response capabilities. Static displayadvertising, on the other hand, will see its share slip from 20.8% ofonline ad dollars in 2008 to 19% this year.

104600

For additional information on the above chart, seeEndnote 104597 | 104600 in the Endnotes section.

1.0%

0.1%

-0.5%

-2.0%

-5.0%

4.5%

4.3%

3.0%

2.3%

2.1%

1.5%

Comparative Estimates: US Online AdvertisingSpending Growth, 2009 (% change*)

19.4%

14.8%

13.0%

10.0%

7.4%

7.2%

6.2%

5.0%

5.0%

LiveRail, September 2008

JupiterResearch, December 2008

BMO Capital Markets, October 2008

Wachovia, October 2008

ZenithOptimedia, April 2009

Borrell Associates Inc., November 2008

SNL Kagan, May 2009

Collins Stewart LLC, May 2009

GroupM, March 2009

eMarketer, April 2009

Citi Investment Research, January 2009

ThinkPanmure LLC, October 2008

Barclays Capital, May 2009

Morgan Stanley, March 2009

Thomas Weisel Partners, March 2009

Jefferies & Company, February 2009

Credit Suisse, February 2009

Myers Publishing LLC, May 2009

Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., February 2009

UBS, February 2009

Cowen and Co., May 2009

-6.0%

Note: *vs. prior yearSource: eMarketer, April 2009; various, as noted, 2008 & 2009

104394 www.eMarketer.com

US Online Display and Search Advertising SpendingShare, 2008-2013 (% of total)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Search* 45.0% 48.8% 50.5% 50.4% 49.4% 49.3%

Display ads** 20.8% 19.0% 18.0% 17.0% 16.1% 14.9%

Note: *paid listings, contextual text links and paid inclusion; **banner adsonly, excludes rich media and videoSource: eMarketer, April 2009

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What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand Measurement

In terms of dollars spent, search advertising will grow 13.4% in2009, while display ads will shrink by 4.6%.

104597

For additional information on the above chart, seeEndnote 104597 | 104600 in the Endnotes section.

After the downward blip in 2009, display ad spending growth willenter positive territory again in 2010, but at a rate of only 3.6%,while search will climb 13.2%.

Over the next several years, display ads as a percent of total online advertising will shrink from 19% in 2009 to just below 15% in 2013. Other researchers and analyst firms forecast a similardownward trend.

More Evidence that Display Ad Spending Will ShrinkeMarketer is not alone in thinking 2009 will see search budgetscontinue to ascend while spending growth on display ads goes negative.

In the comparative estimates chart below, every single researchfirm, investment bank and media house predicts a positive trendfor search ad dollars this year, with a range of 1% growth (Cowenand Co., Myers Publishing) to 21% (BMO Capital Markets). On theother hand, there is a consensus that display spending will seenegative growth. Investment bank Oppenheimer & Co. is the most pessimistic, projecting display ad spending will tumble 15%this year.

104573

For additional information on the above chart, seeEndnote 104573 in the Endnotes section.

“It’s time we woke up and faced reality.Online display-ad spending will fall in 2009,probably sharply.” —Henry Blodget, CEO, Silicon AlleyInsider, October 20, 2008

Quarterly reports offered by Nielsen and TNS provide an early lookat how these display spending projections are coming along. ForQ1 2009, however, the sources provide opposite views: NielsenCo. says display ad spending was down 3.5%, while TNS MediaIntelligence reports it was up 8.2%.

US Online Display and Search Advertising SpendingGrowth, 2008-2013 (% change)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Search* 19.8% 13.4% 13.2% 10.6% 11.2% 10.2%

Display ads** 9.4% -4.6% 3.6% 4.4% 7.8% 2.2%

Note: *paid listings, contextual text links and paid inclusion; **banner adsonly, excludes rich media and videoSource: eMarketer, April 2009

104597 www.eMarketer.com

Comparative Estimates: US Online Display and SearchAdvertising Spending Growth, 2009 (% change*)

Online display

Search

Barclays Capital, May 2009 -1.0% 10.0%

BMO Capital Markets, October 2008 -2.0% 21.0%

Citi Investment Research, November 2008 -5.0% 14.0%

Collins Stewart, November 2008 3.0% 13.0%

Cowen and Company, May 2009 - 1.0%

Credit Suisse, January 2009 -5.9% 8.1%

eMarketer, April 2009 -4.6% 13.4%

Forrester Research, April 2009 1.7% 13.9%

JPMorgan, January 2009 6.3% 9.9%

Myers Publishing LLC, May 2009 -3.0% 1.0%

Oppenheimer & Co., February 2009 -15.0% 10.0%

SNL Kagan, May 2009 4.6% 9.1%

ThinkPanmure, October 2008 -5.0% 13.0%

ZenithOptimedia, April 2009 -1.8% 9.0%

Note: *vs. prior yearSource: eMarketer, April 2009; various, as noted, 2008 & 2009

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 13

What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand Measurement

The reason for the disparity is that each firm is measuring adifferent thing. Specifically, Nielsen, which reported a 3.5% drop indisplay ad spending, only counts CPM-based display spending.TNS Media Intelligence, on the other hand, which reported an 8.2%increase, includes both CPM and cost-per-action/cost-per-clickdeals.We can conclude two things from this data:

1. Online display ad spending continues to increase.

2. Advertisers are shifting from CPM deals to pay-for-performance.

Surveys of marketers and ad agencies tell the same negativestory. For example, in a January 2009 AdMedia Partners survey ofmarketers worldwide, 76% expected to increase their searchspending in 2009, with only 7% planning a decrease. In contrast,only 26% saw increases for display advertising, while 45% werepredicting a decline.

emarketer_2000584_101734

One upside indicator on display ads comes from the world’slargest spender on advertising, Procter & Gamble.According tothe June 8, 2009, issue of Advertising Age, P&G decreased itsmeasured media spending by 18% in Q1 2009 but more thandoubled its spending on online display ads, as measured by TNS.Similarly, P&G’s rival Johnson & Johnson nearly doubled itsspending on Internet display ads in the same quarter. Bothincreases, though, were from very small bases.

It is also instructive to look at how marketers are using display ads.According to AdRelevance, which measures impressions byobjective, advertisers have been slightly increasing their use ofdisplay ads as a means to achieve direct response objectives, with73% of impressions focused on direct response in Q4 2008.At thebeginning of 2008, only 68% of display impressions were direct-response-focused.

104214

“So much of the investment that has beenmade online has been very much tied todirect marketing campaigns.The dollarinvestment made in search alone isrepresentative of that.” —Pam Horan, president,Online Publishers Association (OPA), in an interview witheMarketer,April 27, 2009

Change in Online Marketing Spending in 2009According to Senior Marketing Executives Worldwide(% of respondents)

Increase Flat Decrease

Word-of-mouth/social media marketing 77% 12% 11%

Search marketing 76% 18% 7%

Mobile marketing 75% 14% 11%

Behavioral/contextual marketing 70% 22% 7%

Lead generation 63% 29% 9%

CRM/analytics 60% 31% 9%

Video advertising 60% 24% 16%

E-mail marketing 58% 31% 11%

Online gaming/in-game advertising 51% 30% 18%

Online media buying/planning 47% 40% 13%

Affiliate marketing 46% 35% 19%

Web development 39% 38% 23%

Market research 27% 50% 23%

Display advertising 26% 29% 45%

Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to roundingSource: Ad Media Partners, "2009 Merger and Acquisition Prospects forAdvertising, Marketing Services and Interactive Firms," January 28, 2009

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What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand Measurement

Dollar Trends Don’t Tell the Whole StoryJust because the analysts predict negative growth for onlinedisplay advertising and most advertisers give it short shrift in theirmarketing efforts does not mean that display ads necessarilydeserve the bad rep.

In fact, a pullback or complete retrenchment from displayadvertising could end up being a big mistake for marketers.

There are four interrelated factors impeding the growth of onlinedisplay ad spending:

■ A depressed economy, along with severely reduced mediabudgets overall

■ Intense pressure on pricing for display units, which, in turn, is afunction of both the economy and the proliferation of adnetworks (more than 400 at last count), which tend tocommoditize pricing

■ A lack of adequate measurement systems to justify the use ofdisplay ads

■ A tendency for marketers, in the context of draconian budgetcutbacks, to focus their marketing efforts on below-the-line,direct response initiatives

The last factor represents a familiar pattern for marketers.AsRandall Rothenberg, CEO of the IAB, said on his clog (a crossbetween a blog and a column): “It’s an axiom of marketing thatwhen the economy gets rough, marketers shift budgets fromabove-the-line programs to below-the-line—that is, they trade offlonger-term effects of brand-building for the shorter-term need tomove product.”

This thinking was echoed by the results of an April 2009 surveyamong 129 marketers conducted by the Association of NationalAdvertisers (ANA). In the study, two-thirds of marketers said theyhad shifted their focus to more short-term strategies over the pastsix months in response to the economy.

Pricing PressuresOnline display ads are typically sold on a cost-per-thousand (CPM)impression basis.According to Credit Suisse, online display adCPMs are headed downward for the next several years, projectedto fall from an average of $2.46 in 2008 to $2.30 by 2013, resultingin a cumulative decrease of 6.5%. Note that these prices arerepresentative of traditional banner ads. Online video ads, forexample, typically garner a CPM of $15 or higher.

“Ad networks have driven CPMs down to aterrible level.” —David Verklin, CEO, Canoe Ventures,as quoted in MediaPost’s OnlineMediaDaily,April 29, 2009

At $2.46 in 2008, average online CPMs were less expensive thanevery form of traditional media, with the exception of outdoor,according to Jefferies & Co.

103170

“Two elements working in online displayadvertising’s favor are that its trackingcapabilities have been improved and itspricing made more reasonable.” —Nate Elliott,principal analyst, Forrester Research, as quoted in BtoBmagazine,April 6, 2009

CPM pricing for display ads purchased through ad networks is alsoon the decline.According to the Q4 2008 report from PubMatic,display ads sold through ad networks decreased by 48% in thatquarter compared with Q4 2007. More recently, CPMs on adnetworks were estimated to be down by 20% to 30% in Q1 2009from Q4 2008, as measured by the Rubicon Project.

Of course, this downward CPM trend may also create anopportunity. Marketers can buy display ads relatively cheaplynow—at a time when budgets are particularly tight. For brandmarketers, this is a buyer’s market.

Not only are the lower CPMs on display ads creating potentialsavings for advertisers, the decreased volume of display ads in theaggregate is reducing the clutter of online ads. Many studies,including one by Nielsen, report that having fewer ads perWebpage results in significant increases in unaided recall.

US Advertising CPM, by Media, 2008

Broadcast TV $10.25

Syndication TV $8.77

Magazines $6.98

Cable TV $5.99

Newspapers $5.50

Radio $4.54

Outdoor $2.26

Source: Jefferies & Company, Media Dynamics, InterMedia Dimensions andcompany reports, "Snapshot of the Global Media Landscape," provided toeMarketer, February 2009

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What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand Measurement

Beyond Banners: Other Online Formats Will BoostOverall Branding DollarsWhile traditional display ad units—mostly banners—currentlyrepresent the bulk of brand-oriented ad dollars online, other formsof online brand ads are growing at a much faster rate. In addition tobanner ads, totaling $4.7 billion in 2009, rich media and video adsaccount for another $2.7 billion. Other forms of brand advertising—mainly sponsorships—make up an additional $300 million, bringingtotal online brand ad spending in 2009 to $7.7 billion.

104363

For additional information on the above chart, see Endnote102197 | 104363 | 104366 in the Endnotes section.

Importantly, when all the branding-related componentsare combined, the aggregate dollars show a positivegrowth rate for every year from 2009 though 2013. Totalonline branding dollars will rise 1% in 2009 and 10.4% in 2010,followed by double-digit increases thereafter.

104366

For additional information on the above chart, see Endnote102197 | 104363 | 104366 in the Endnotes section.

Video ad spending alone will climb at a 40%-plus growth rate forthe next few years.

A Special Note on Social Media Dollar TrendsWhile social media spending by US advertisers was on an upwardtrajectory until the recession hit, eMarketer now predicts the marketfor social network advertising will actually decrease by 3% in 2009.The lack of measurement standards, or even a clear idea of whatand how to measure, is the primary factor inhibiting spending.

Surveys can be misleading, particularly if the results aremisinterpreted. If you poll advertisers, they will tell you that even inthe face of this recession, they are planning to boost theirspending on social media. In fact, several recent surveys, includingones from Aberdeen Group, Millward Brown, Forrester andMarketingSherpa, suggest that about one-half of advertisers ormore plan to increase their social media spending. But even ifthese increases happen, they will be from very small bases.According to Forrester, three-quarters of marketers looking to dosocial media advertising have earmarked only $100,000 or less.

US Online Advertising Spending, by Format andObjective, 2008- 2013 (millions)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Display ads $4,877 $4,655 $4,824 $5,034 $5,426 $5,543

Video $734 $1,054 $1,501 $2,109 $3,134 $4,092

Rich media $1,642 $1,691 $1,849 $2,079 $2,359 $2,641

Sponsorships $387 $319 $348 $386 $438 $484

Branding total $7,640 $7,718 $8,522 $9,608 $11,357 $12,760

Search $10,546 $11,956 $13,534 $14,969 $16,648 $18,340

Classifieds $3,174 $2,671 $2,412 $2,554 $2,831 $2,976

Lead generation $1,683 $1,764 $1,930 $2,138 $2,393 $2,604

E-mail $405 $392 $402 $431 $472 $521

Direct responsetotal

$15,808 $16,783 $18,278 $20,092 $22,343 $24,440

Grand total $23,448 $24,500 $26,800 $29,700 $33,700 $37,200

Note: numbers may not add up to total due to roundingSource: eMarketer, April 2009

104363 www.eMarketer.com

US Online Advertising Spending Growth, by Formatand Objective, 2008-2013 (% change)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Video 126.5% 43.5% 42.5% 40.5% 48.6% 30.6%

Rich media -0.8% 3.0% 9.4% 12.4% 13.5% 12.0%

Sponsorships -39.2% -17.7% 9.4% 10.8% 13.5% 10.4%

Display ads 9.4% -4.6% 3.6% 4.4% 7.8% 2.2%

Branding total 8.0% 1.0% 10.4% 12.7% 18.2% 12.4%

E-mail -4.5% -3.2% 2.6% 7.1% 9.6% 10.4%

Search 19.8% 13.4% 13.2% 10.6% 11.2% 10.2%

Lead generation 6.3% 4.8% 9.4% 10.8% 11.9% 8.8%

Classifieds -4.4% -15.9% -9.7% 5.9% 10.8% 5.1%

Direct response total 11.8% 6.2% 8.9% 9.9% 11.2% 9.4%

Grand total 10.6% 4.5% 9.4% 10.8% 13.5% 10.4%

Source: eMarketer, April 2009

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 16

Drill Down:What Are the Problems?

What are the fundamental problems with online

brand measurement today? Ask a few dozen

experts—from agency executives and marketers

to representatives from the various trade

associations and research firms—and you will

likely get a few dozen answers.

eMarketer posed the question directly to experts in the field ofonline measurement, and the responses were, predictably, all overthe map.And that fact alone—that the players can’t even agree onwhere to begin—is the overarching problem. Fortunately, though,a closer analysis reveals several common themes that indicate theproblems are so highly interrelated that solving one can solveothers at the same time.

Q&A:What is the single biggest problem with onlinebrand measurement today?

“In our marketing accountability survey,only about 33% of marketerswere satisfied with their marketing accountability and measurementprograms.We don’t have enough standardization or enough usefulmarketing media mix intelligence and understanding.Studies andresearch offer guidance,but marketers complain that by the timethey get the answers back, the media world has shifted and the mixor model is no longer relevant.”Full Interview

“I think it’s really hard to create a panel of size and scale and atechnique to do surveys that aren’t interruptive.You can docustom one-offs with one of the research companies that don’tscale or are very focused on individual campaigns, but they don’ttell the whole story.” Full Interview

“There are two big problems: I’m hearing from our publishermembers that there is a kind of panel fatigue among people whoare asked to take online surveys that are quantifying brandimpact. Panel recruitment and response rates are issues.Thesecond is an assumption that the Internet is not good forbranding—there is a continued lack of awareness on the part ofmarketers and agencies.” Full Interview

“Marketers monitor the front end and the back end so they seeclickstreams and commerce.The difficult part is the qualitative partin between,which is the level of engagement.The challenge is tobegin to build technological capabilities that allow them to see thecomplete digital footprint that a consumer leaves when they engagewith the brand and then be able to address that consumer in arelevant way—behaviorally, contextually or both.”Full Interview

“I think it’s not having those foundational reach, frequency and GRPmetrics.You will never see P&G and Unilever spend more thansingle digits (millions) unless we give them reach, frequency andGRPs.Their entire business model is based on media mix modelswhere those are the inputs and the outputs.” Full Interview

A General Apathy Toward BrandingIn this harsh economic environment, does branding even matterto marketers?

“Branding is the hardest thing to justify, and everybody looks tothat budget first,” as Bob Thacker, the senior vice president formarketing at OfficeMax, told Advertising Age in May 2009.

Any progress or advancements made in the field of online brandmeasurement will be heavily dependent on the overall demandfor brand-oriented advertising.

Due to the economy and resultant short-term sales pressurestoday, it appears branding will be taking a bit of a backseat to otherbusiness priorities, at least according to most of the studies andsurveys eMarketer evaluated for this report.

Bob LiodicePresident and Chief Executive Officer

Association of National Advertisers,trade association

Curt HechtPresident

Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center (includes Digitas, Starcom MediaVestGroup, ZenithOptimedia and Denuo)

Joe LaszloDirector of Research

Interactive Advertising Bureau,trade association

Michael MendenhallChief Marketing Officer

Hewlett-Packard,marketer

Young-Bean SongSenior Director of Analytics & Atlas Institute

Microsoft Advertising,Microsoft Corp.’s digitalmarketing and media solutions provider

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Drill Down:What Are the Problems?

“However strongly you believe in your brand,you have to do your bit to reduce spendingat tough times like these.” —Marty Ordman, vicepresident, marketing and communications, Dole Food Co.,speaking at the ANA Brand Conference, as cited inAdvertising Age, May 13, 2009

In the one clear exception to the rule, the ANA released resultsfrom a “Brand Building in Tough Times and Beyond” study at itsMay 2009 conference of the same name. In close alignment withthe theme of the conference, 74% of senior marketers respondedthat “brand equity” is very important to their company’s success.

Yet a wealth of other survey data suggests otherwise—namely,that brand-building will remain a low priority during the recession.The ANA survey provides the first case in point. In its sampling of129 marketers, two-thirds admitted that the recession had shiftedthe focus of their companies to short-term results, as opposed tothe longer-term results associated with branding.

According to a recent MarketingProfs survey conducted among670 marketers in October 2008, while more than one-quarter ofrespondents identified customer acquisition (29.9%) and customerretention (26.6%) as top goals, only 15.4% cited “creatingawareness for long-term brand-building” as a top priority.

emarketer_2000584_098997

Similar results were found by Heidrick & Struggles in a December2008 survey of US senior executives. Branding took sixth placeamong their top priorities over the next 12 to 18 months.

emarketer_2000584_103672

Another survey, from Datran Media, shows that the marketers’current focus on driving customer acquisition and retention at theexpense of brand-building goals (such as increasing brandawareness or favorability) is not just a US trend.The survey,conducted among 3,000 marketers worldwide, found that whileincreased customer acquisition and retention were rated mostimportant by 63.2% and 43.7% of respondents, respectively, only14.1% rated branding measures as highly.

101242

Most Important Marketing Objective According to USMarketers, October 2008 (% of respondents)

Acquire new customers not currently in the category

29.9%

Customer retention (upsell, encourage repeat purchase)

26.6%

Lead generation to support sales

21.3%

Creating awareness for long-term brand building

15.4%

Taking customers away from competitors

7.0%

Note: n=670; numbers may not add up to 100% due to roundingSource: MarketingProfs, "Impact of Economic Crisis," provided toeMarketer, October 20, 2008

098997 www.eMarketer.com

Top Priorities in the Next 12-18 Months According toUS* Senior Executives, November-December 2008(scale of 1-5**)

Acquire new customers 4.22

Increase customer retention 3.90

Increase customer lifetime value 3.74

Improve marketing ROI 3.64

Launch new products/services 3.59

Increase brand awareness 3.46

Improve marketing's impact on shareholder value 3.36

Acquire, develop and retain talent 3.31

Expand to new geographies 2.62

Note: n=111; *90% of respondents are US-based; **1=not important and5=extremely importantSource: Heidrick & Struggles, "The Digital Marketing Standard," provided toeMarketer, April 20, 2009

103672 www.eMarketer.com

Advertising Goals for 2009 According to MarketersWorldwide, by Level of Importance (% of respondents)

Most important

Important Less important

Least important

New customeracquisition

63.2% 32.7% 2.2% 2.6%

Increased brandawareness

14.0% 48.7% 26.0% 11.3%

Increased brandfavorability

14.1% 48.7% 26.6% 11.4%

Increasedcustomerretention

43.7% 43.7% 7.8% 5.6%

Note: n=3,000+; numbers may not add up to 100% due to roundingSource: Datran Media, "3rd Annual Marketing & Media Survey," January 27,2009

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Drill Down:What Are the Problems?

Similarly, in the context of interactive campaigns, Forbesconducted a survey of 112 senior marketers primarily in the US inearly 2009 and found that direct response measurements weresignificantly more popular than branding metrics as a gauge forsuccess.While 70% of all respondents identified conversions asthe leading measure of success and 49% mentioned click-throughrates, only 25% cited brand-building metrics.

104355

The low ranking for branding is partly explained by a survey fromthe ANA. In its October 2008 study, just when the financial crisisbegan in earnest, marketers were asked to cite methods theywere using for measuring brand growth. Fully 70% said the answerwas “sales and net income,” which is about as blunt and bottom-line a measure as you can get.

099230

Again, even though marketers appear to be temporarily retreatingfrom branding initiatives, including deploying and measuringonline brand campaigns, it does not mean that is the right thing todo. Mr. Liodice, the CEO of the ANA, summed it up best: “It hasbeen demonstrated empirically, time and again, that stronger,higher-valued brands lead to stronger, better business results.”

A Preoccupation with Search, at the Expense of BrandingIn the InsightExpress poll conducted for this report, 83.7% ofmarketing professionals from a variety of disciplines andcompanies agreed or strongly agreed with the following statement:

“Online search—because it’s so easily measured and isoften the last click before a purchase—is getting toomuch credit. We therefore undervalue the brandingeffects of online advertising formats such as banners,interactive rich media and video.”

Only 16.2% of respondents were neutral, and not a single onedisagreed with the statement.

104493

Most Important Metrics for Measuring OnlineMarketing Campaign Success According to US*Senior-Level Marketing Executives, by Budget Size,February-March 2009 (% of respondents)

Conversions or sales

Registrations/subscriptions via organization'sWebsite

Click-throughs

Unique views to Website or page where ad orcontent was placed

Boost in search rank

Downloads of data of information

Change in target audience awareness/perceptions of brand

Customer feedback on Website

Number of target audience members reached

Streams of video or audio content

Other

$1 million+(n=49)

82%

55%

51%

51%

39%

33%

31%

16%

14%

8%

6%

Allrespondents

(n=112)

70%

52%

49%

37%

34%

37%

25%

26%

13%

6%

3%

Note: *respondents were primarily based in the USSource: Forbes, "2009 Ad Effectiveness Survey," June 1, 2009

104355 www.eMarketer.com

Method Used to Measure Brand Growth According toUS Marketers, October 2008 (% of respondents)

Sales and net income 70%

Third-party brand equity valuations 15%

Shareholder value 9%

Household penetration 4%

Company culture 3%

Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to roundingSource: Association of National Advertisers (ANA) as cited in press release,October 29, 2008

099230 www.eMarketer.com

Neutral16.2%

Agree43.2%

Strongly agree40.5%

US Marketing Executives Who Agree that OnlineSearch Is Given Too Much Credit in Online BrandMeasurement, April 2009 (% of respondents)

Note: n=37; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding; norespondents chose "disagree" or "strongly disagree"Source: eMarketer, "Online Brand Measurement Survey" conducted byInsightExpress, June 2009

104493 www.eMarketer.com

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Drill Down:What Are the Problems?

A few responses from the InsightExpresspoll explain why search gets too muchcredit:

“It’s easy to measure the last click and attribute all of the credit to search. It’s the perfect attributionmodel for the lazy [marketer].”

“There is minimal branding and emotionaltransference with SEM marketing. Search does verylittle to complement a cross-platform marketingplan. Branding through visuals is still paramount ingetting people excited, and for establishing anemotional connection with a product.”

“Generally speaking, marketers attribute 100% oftransactional performance to search knowing thatother preference-building messaging leads theconsumer down the purchase pathway.”

Too many marketers are not even measuring their online brandingefforts.According to a May 2008 PROMO magazine survey of 148US marketers (who subscribe to the magazine, which skewstoward direct response marketers), only 41.5% said they measuredmetrics for online brand awareness.A much higher percentage(58.5%) used the far less meaningful click-through metric.

097957

A January 2008 survey by Sapient found similar results, with only48% of marketers saying they measured online brandingcampaigns; in contrast, 71% measured search and 82% measuredWebsite analytics.

Not surprisingly, brand marketers are frustrated. Having foundthemselves in hot pursuit of direct response metrics, they are notgetting the answers to the most fundamental questions they haveabout their online branding efforts.

Wenda Harris Millard, president of consultancy Media Link andimmediate past chair of the IAB, explained it this way in aninterview with eMarketer: “Brand marketers really want to knowwho they’re reaching.We keep talking about impressions.They[brand marketers] want classic demographics. Impressions are nota substitute for knowing who you will reach.They also want toknow how long someone looked at an ad and what happened. Didit leave a favorable impression of the brand? Will someone try thisproduct? And did somebody take an action at any point? Theywant to create awareness and then know whether they changed aconsumer’s perception or induced trial.”

Ms. Millard, who previously held senior sales and media positionsat Yahoo! and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, continued,“Brand marketers are frustrated about not getting answers tothose basic questions, so they end up looking at online as more ofa performance-oriented medium.The agencies, in many cases,are using classic direct marketing metrics and trying to measurebrand impact using those metrics—but that doesn’t answer themarketers’ real questions.”

Killer Stat for the Purchase Funnel: 94%When a Microsoft Atlas Institute study examined the 90-daytimeline for a typical purchase funnel, it found that companiesoften disregard 94% of the data available to them when assessingonline campaigns.The study also revealed that marketersattribute far too much weight to activity occurring at the verybottom of the sales funnel, concentrating heavily on the last adclicked, which often appears on a search engine.

Metrics Used by US Marketers to Measure InteractiveCampaign Effectiveness, 2007 & 2008 (% ofrespondents)

2007 2008

Click-throughs 51.0% 58.5%

Incremental sales 41.1% 43.5%

Offer response rates 44.5% 42.9%

Brand awareness 36.5% 41.5%

Lead generation 40.7% 36.1%

Return-on-promo investment 34.2% 34.7%

Increased understanding of customer 26.6% 23.8%

Coupon redemption rates 16.3% 19.0%

Engagement with Web content 12.2% 16.3%

Media impressions 24.7% 16.3%

Improved sales margins 4.6% 4.9%

Don't measure * 2.0%

Does not apply 4.9% 2.7%

Note: *not asked in 2007Source: PROMO magazine, "2008 Promo Interactive Marketing Survey"conducted by Penton Research, May 2008

097957 www.eMarketer.com

Traditional AIDA Model Representing Consumer Purchase Funnel

I n t e r e s t

DesireAction

A w a r e n e s s

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Commenting on the study, Esco Strong, senior group manager ofthe Atlas Institute, said, “It’s a myopic view that disregards thepoints at the top of the funnel that brought the consumers downto the bottom.” Mr. Strong added, “You make someone aware atthe top of the funnel, target them with specific information in themiddle, and drive them to buy with search at the end.”

Not everyone in the industry is in agreement about where in thefunnel the most work needs to be done. Some, such as Curt Hecht,president of VivaKi Nerve Center, believe the top of the salesfunnel is trickiest since it deals with attitudes. “Once you get intoreal behavior around intent and helping clients come up withproxies to show levels of interest, it’s the attitudinal metrics at thetop of the funnel that are harder to come up with,” said Mr. Hecht,in an interview with eMarketer.

Others, such as Ken Mallon, senior vice president-custom solutionsand ad effectiveness consulting at Dynamic Logic, a firm thatmeasures brand metrics for online campaigns, think the ad industryhas got the top part of the funnel licked, but the bottom part—tyingintentions to end results—presents the biggest challenge.

“The hardest part is the last step, [measuring] what happens aftersomeone makes an intent to purchase,” said Mr. Mallon, in aninterview with eMarketer. “What happens after someone raisestheir hand and says, ‘Yes, I do intend to go to that movie. I dointend to buy that car in the next 90 days.’ How does intenttranslate into actual purchase?”

Agreeing with Mr. Mallon is Jeff Lanctot, the chief strategy officerof interactive agency Razorfish, who told eMarketer in aninterview:“[Our clients] see the opportunity to tie attitudinalmeasures to behavioral measures, and that’s where thecomplexity comes in.There’s value in measuring those tried-and-true attitudinal metrics but also in recognizing that there’s anotherpiece to the puzzle—actual behavior. Did consumers purchase?Did they register? Did they take that end action? Digital yieldsvaluable insights and also creates incredible complexity.”

To make things even more complicated, some stakeholders evenquestion whether the standard sales funnel model is adequate torepresent the complexity in today’s digital world.

“We’re asking ourselves whether the funnelconstruct is actually the right one.Theresearch we’ve seen shows that thepurchase decision process is far morecomplex and nonlinear than a simple funnel.[For example,] I don’t think we have a goodidea of how peer influence works in a funnelconstruct.There’s been very little progress toevaluate the impact of those [social]conversations on brands.” —Jeff Lanctot, chiefstrategy officer, Razorfish, in an interview with eMarketer,April 28, 2009

Key StatAccording to the Atlas Institute, if marketers only lookat search, which is often the “last ad clicked,” they aremissing 94% of their engagement touchpoints.

“Some marketers are starting to use thetechnology that manages online adcampaigns (the ad-serving platform) toassess the impact of all online touchpoints,instead of basing the optimization of mediaon the last click before a conversion.”—Jacques Bughin,Amy Guggenheim Shenkan and MarcSinger,The McKinsey Quarterly, October 2008

Clearly, if marketers are going to spend precious dollars executingonline branding campaigns, they ought to be measuring theresults—even if it costs a little extra in terms of time and effort.

Today, the tendency among online marketers is to measure onlysearch and give it most or all of the credit for online conversions.They do this because search results, which often represent thelast ad clicked, are relatively easy to measure. But a wealth of datasuggests marketers should be applying much more rigorousmeasurement analytics and integrating search and display resultsto get the complete story on their campaigns.

Another factor is frequency.We all know that multiple messagesdo a better a job convincing consumers to buy a product than asingle message. By exposing a given consumer to multiple displaymessages, in addition to the search text ad they get after a searchinquiry, marketers are likely to improve conversion rates.

Numerous quantitative studies prove that when display ads arecombined with search, marketers can expect a significantincrease in sales conversions, whether those take place online oroffline. (See Data Spotlight section of report.)

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“The challenge is that people are applyingdirect metrics in many cases to what isinherently a branding campaign.We need tocontinue to evolve the brand metrics in orderto make sure we are using the right metricsto measure what the campaign objectivesare. But to simply use direct metrics tomeasure brand campaign performance isnever going to be successful.” —Pam Horan,president,Online Publishers Association, in an interviewwith eMarketer,April 27,2009

An Addiction to ClicksClicks represent the low-hanging fruit of measurement—and that iswhy marketers tend to seek them out with a vengeance. But clicksdo not even begin to capture the full value of online display ads.

According to comScore, two-thirds of Internet users never click ondisplay ads over the course of a month; moreover, only 16% ofInternet users account for 80% of all clicks.That helps explainswhy the average click-through rate for display ads has plummetedover the years to a mere 0.1%. (Note that online video ads can stillelicit click-through rates in the 1% to 4% range, but that is likely totaper off over time.)

“The majority of marketers are not actuallyusing the Web for brand advertising.They’reusing it for direct response and promotion.”—Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO, Forbes.com, treasurerof the OPA and chairman emeritus of the IAB, in aninterview with eMarketer,April 2009

A January 2009 study commissioned by iProspect and conductedby Forrester Consulting shows that when Internet users wereexposed to a promotional ad, less than one-third (31%) of themclicked on the ad itself; however, a plurality did take some otherform of action:

■ 27% searched for the product, brand or company using a search engine.

■ 21% typed the Web address directly into their browser andnavigated to the advertiser’s site.

■ 9% investigated the product, brand or company through social media.

Another 37% of respondents in the iProspect study claimed to becompletely nonresponsive to “any such ads.”

“If I don’t have a display campaign to supportmy paid search campaign, I’m basicallygiving the traffic away to my competitors.”—Robert Murray, CEO, iProspect, “Search EngineMarketing and Online Display Advertising IntegrationStudy,” May 2009

Overall, the iProspect study concluded that Internet users weremore likely to engage with or make a purchase from brands withwhich they were already familiar, and online brand ads are oneway to get there.

Additional comScore research, conducted with Starcom USA,reveals no correlation between display ad clicks and basic brandmetrics. In other words, if you look only at clicks, you’reconsidering only a tiny fraction of the economic value of an onlineadvertising campaign. Study after study has shown that onlinedisplay ads generate awareness and interest—even if those adsnever get clicked.

Why have clicks become the default standard for online brandmeasurement? Very simply, because they are so easy to measure.Jim Meskauskas, vice present/director of online media atOmnicom-owned ICON International, put it this way in an e-mail toeMarketer: “Every client is a branding client, until they get theirfirst tracking report. Then they turn into direct marketers.”

Or, as Kathryn Koegel, former DoubleClick researcher and aprincipal at media research consulting company Primary Impact,wrote in her May 2009 “The State of Digital Display” white paper:“We have built a parallel universe that does online little service toits power for marketing and placed too much responsibility on aclick on a small graphic image, rather than the fundamentals ofmedia planning and creative.”

If there was one point on which all the professionals eMarketerinterviewed for this report could unanimously agree, it was that ifyour goal is to build brands, clicks are the wrong way to go.

“Because of our direct response heritage [inthe online advertising industry], we’vetoiled under the tyranny of the click for toolong.” —Randall Rothenberg, CEO, InteractiveAdvertising Bureau, as quoted in Advertising Age,March 30, 2009

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The Scourge of ClicksIf there are any lingering doubts about counting clicks, talk to GianFulgoni, chairman of comScore.

In an interview with eMarketer, Mr. Fulgoni gave a clear andimpassioned argument for moving beyond the click-through as ametric for online branding success.The problem arose, he said,when the Internet was first evolving as an advertising medium.The technology community at the time had “a very short-termview of how advertising works that was direct-response-oriented,not branding-oriented,” said Mr. Fulgoni.

Because the click-through rate was so easy to measure, it got theindustry into a direct response groove, which has in turn led to aserious undervaluing of branding online.

“Let’s just accept that the click is not telling the whole [branding]story,” said Mr. Fulgoni. “We don’t hold traditional media to thatsame level of accountability.We don’t say you need toimmediately pick up a phone and call somebody if you see a TV ador if you’re listening to a radio ad or read something in a magazine.Why should the Internet be measured by this immediate responsemetric called the ‘click’?”

Mr. Fulgoni recently wrote a white paper entitled “How OnlineAdvertising Works:Whither the Click?” which culled data frommore than 200 studies and was published in the June 15, 2009,issue of the Journal of Advertising Research.The white paperconcluded that an ad impression on the Internet works just like anad impression in traditional media.

According to Mr. Fulgoni, people who are exposed to a display ad—whether or not they click on it—have “an increased likelihood ofvisiting the Website of the brand in the ad, an increased likelihoodof conducting a trademark search query, an increased likelihood ofbuying online, an increased likelihood of buying offline.”

“[The display ad] has a lasting effect,” concluded Mr. Fulgoni.“Cumulatively, impressions build up over time and create animage of a brand.Then when you go off and do a search, you’vegot the brand better established in your mind.”

While direct response is attractive to marketers because of theimmediate gratification of almost-instant results, they must take alonger view when measuring branding effects, which arecumulative in nature.

Click-obsession leaves marketers with a very crude andinadequate accounting measure that ignores most of the potentialvalue of an ad.They do not know if the ad created awareness inthe mind of the consumer, if it served as a reminder to buy theproduct at a later time, if it created a more favorable impression ofthe brand or reinforced loyalty to the brand.These attitudinal shiftssimply do not happen in the instant of a click.

Do Traditional Measurement Techniques Work forNew Media?Having accepted the fact that clicks are not the answer, what aboutadopting the measurement techniques of traditional media?

For years, those inside and outside the Internet ad industry havedebated whether standard offline metrics, most notably GRPs(gross rating points), page impressions, reach and frequency,should be applied to the digital space.

On one hand, many have said that the typical forms ofmeasurement for traditional media do not translate well online.Nor do these metrics take into account the Internet’s uniqueinteractive qualities that allow for two-way communications withconsumers. In a word, they feel these forms of measurement areinadequate, or even irrelevant.

Scott Knoll of Datran Media put it well in a recent iMediaConnection article: “The models that have been in use up to thispoint most resemble the proxy- and panel-based models ofbroadcast [television] and fail to represent the very thing thatmakes [the digital] industry different—its interactivity.”

“It’s like going to a 3-D movie without theglasses.The Internet is more dimensional,but [for the most part] measurement criteriaare the same as for a one-way medium.Youdon’t have the glasses so you’re notappreciating the dimensions.” —Matt Freeman,CEO, Betawave, as quoted in AdWeek, March 23, 2009

Others argue that the power and possibilities of social mediaprograms that allow for deep consumer engagement are completelyignored by traditional reach and frequency measurements.

But don’t write off traditional media measurements and metricsjust yet.There is a growing movement to support the applicationof tried-and-true GRPs to Internet ad planning and measurement,and this may well be a key to opening up the floodgates for moremedia dollars and advertiser interest.

The key here is making online comparable to other media. “On theone hand, you’ve got incredible [measurement] granularity on theWeb and a lot more insight into your brand metrics,” said JimSpanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com, in an interview witheMarketer. “On the other hand, you really can’t compare that inany way, shape or form to your offline spend.”

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Integration Is Hard When Data Is Locked in SilosIn eMarketer’s interviews with professionals who are experts inthe field of building models and processes for online brandmeasurement, it was clear that unlocking data silos is a criticalstep toward connecting the dots of media measurement.AsRazorfish’s Jeff Lanctot told eMarketer, “For all the talk about theintegration of traditional and digital media, they’re still bought inisolation much more than they’re bought in integrated packages.”

“The single biggest issue advertisers aredealing with is how to use online properly incombination with other marketingactivities.To get there, we need dataintegration and that’s the hard part.”—Bob Barocci, president,Advertising ResearchFoundation, in an interview with eMarketer,April 2009

In an interview with eMarketer, Cary Tilds of Mindshare-TeamDetroit said,“The current approach to planning media is what Iwould call the buckets-of-money approach.You have a TV bucket, adigital bucket, a search bucket, you might have an emerging [media]bucket.You have buckets of money.The unspoken controversy isabout switching money from one bucket to another.”

Ms.Tilds added, “But the buckets of money approach has nothingto do with how people consume media.A good media plannerneeds to figure out how to allocate money against the consumerjourney—and that is a very complex problem.You have to identifyall the knowns and unknowns in the long string of mathematicalequations that we need in order to move from buckets of moneyto consumer-centric planning.”

Further proof that data silos are a problem comes fromquantitative surveys.According to a November 2008 study byJupiterResearch and Verse Group, 78% of US marketers agreedthat internal silos act as the biggest barrier to integratingmarketing.A related concern was “managing our brand acrossmultiple platforms.”

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A more recent study, conducted in March 2009 by TNS MediaIntelligence and sponsored by rich media provider Eyeblaster,found that while 67% of senior marketers are now running cross-channel campaigns, a scant 12% are integrating performance dataacross channels.

When it comes to integrating digital and traditional media, toomany marketers feel as though they are operating in the dark.Twoseparate surveys bear this out.

In the study by Heidrick & Struggles of 111 US senior marketers, apaltry 15% of respondents claimed satisfaction with theiroptimization of the marketing mix.

Another study, jointly conducted by the 4A’s and the ANA, foundthat only 7% of US marketers said they were “very satisfied” withtheir progress toward integrating online and traditional media.

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Attitudes of US Marketers Toward Marketing Duringthe Economic Crisis, November 2008 (% ofrespondents who somewhat or strongly agree)

Due to the suffering economy, marketing efforts are undergreater scrutiny than ever before

89%

Internal silos are the biggest barrier to integrating marketingwith customer experiences

78%

Managing our brand across multiple platforms is a big challengefor my organization

71%

Note: n=101Source: JupiterResearch and Verse Group, "A Shift in Marketing," providedto eMarketer, December 7, 2008

100379 www.eMarketer.com

Satisfaction Level of US Marketers with TheirCompany's Progress in Integrating Traditional andDigital Media, Q1 2009 (% of respondents)

Very satisfied 7%

Somewhat satisfied 52%

Neutral 10%

Somewhat dissatisfied 23%

Very dissatisfied 8%

Note: n=122 client-side marketers (members of ANA)Source: Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 4A's and BellwetherLeadership Research & Development, "Integrating Traditional and DigitalMedia," provided to eMarketer, April 23, 2009

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Among the obstacles to integrating traditional and online media,according to the joint 4A’s/ANA study, were the lack of metrics and an insufficient understanding of digital media among senior management.

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The top frustration among agency executives, on the other hand,was that their clients do not fully understand how consumers usedigital media.

The study also identified challenges in measuring marketing ROI.On a scale from 1 to 5 (where 5 represents “a major problem”), thetop challenges were data scattered across the organization (3.2),difficulty allocating enough resources to do the work (3.2) andinconsistent data formats (3.1).

In an interview with eMarketer, Michael Mendenhall, senior vicepresident and chief marketing officer of Hewlett-Packard, hadmuch to say about the problems and solutions for data silos.“Many marketers have disparate databases that don’t speak toeach other, so they don’t have a 360-degree view of a customer….As you think about Fortune 500 companies that are selling acrossa portfolio and selling brand experiences, it becomes very hard tosell based on a portfolio approach without appropriate analytics.”

He added, “The challenge for marketers is to begin to buildtechnological capabilities that allow you to see the completedigital footprint a given customer leaves when they engage withyour brand.You need to be able to understand that behaviorallyand/or contextually and address that consumer in a relevantway….Where most marketers struggle is they do not have theinformation technology capability and/or management to do that.You need a sophisticated CRM platform that allows you to identifysomebody coming through search or display, and gets them to optin and [allows you to] start to manage them…. Marketers need theability to pull strategic information out of the digital footprints thatconsumers are leaving.”

In an interview with eMarketer, Martin Nisenholtz, senior vicepresident for digital operations of The New York Times Co.,provided a publisher’s perspective on the online/offline dataintegration problem.“The thing that I continue to hear over andover again from people is, ‘Gee, I wish I had a way to tie my onlinebrand measures to my offline brand measures so that I couldstandardize,’” he said. “If I’m spending X amount of money ontelevision and Y amount on the Web, wouldn’t it be great if I couldlook at one set of metrics and determine whether the offline plusthe online were more powerful together, whether the online on itsown has efficacy and whether the offline without the online ismuch weaker or not.”

Online SilosOf course, data silos also exist within the interactive platform.According to an iMedia Connection article by Scott Knoll, a vicepresident at Datran Media, “The problem is not the existence ofthe data.The problem resides in separate measurements forsearch, display, email, video, and mobile, creating…‘data smog.’”

Kathryn Koegel, in her May 2009 white paper about the state ofonline display ads, identifies intra-Internet silos as a majorobstacle to online advertising efficiency and success. “The silo-ingof media into online vs. offline, direct vs. branding, search vs.display, behavioral vs. contextual, undercuts the creation of mediaplans that address actual consumer purchase processes in themost efficient manner,” she wrote.

Too Much Information,Too Much ComplexityAnother major obstacle to online brand measurement is the sheertonnage of data to be extracted, filtered and integrated—as wellas the mind-numbing complexity that data creates.

“The problem with online is we have toomuch data, actually.” —Jon Gibs, vice president-media analytics, Nielsen Online, in an interview witheMarketer,April 17, 2009

Challenges of Integrating Traditional and OnlineMedia According to US Marketers, Q1 2009 (averageranking*)

Having metrics to properly allocate the mix of traditional anddigital media

4.25

Key people at company lack understanding of digital media

3.95

Reluctance to move funds from "tried and true" practices of thepast

3.89

Internal organizational silos impede a focused enterprisewideapproach

3.74

It is difficult to get multiple agencies to collaborate effectivelyon integration

3.41

Note: n=122 client-side marketers (members of ANA); *on a scale of 0-5where 0="no problem at all" and 5= "a major problem"Source: Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 4A's and BellwetherLeadership Research & Development, "Integrating Traditional and DigitalMedia," provided to eMarketer, April 23, 2009

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While the Internet offers an abundance of possible metrics, thatvery same plenty creates complexity and confusion. It is relativelysimple and straightforward when the objective is direct response.The desired behavior is not only easy to measure, it is often near-instant.The consumer sees the direct response ad, followsthrough with the call to action, and the marketer can quickly andeasily measure the results.

“Every day that I read about a newtechnology…I get worried….The scary thingis how complex [digital advertising] can be.”—Mark Addicks, senior vice president and chief marketingofficer, General Mills, in an interview with eMarketer,May 4, 2009

When branding is the objective, though, the whole measurementprocess is much more complex. First, the intended result—achange in feeling, perception or attitude—is harder to measure.Second, the impact of brand-building occurs over a period of time,often weeks, months or even years.Third, there are far more dotsthat need to be connected.

“Branding is a longer-term proposition. It’snot about recalling a specific ad you saw 5seconds ago. It’s about whether people feelbetter about a brand or not.” —Young-BeanSong, senior director of analytics and Atlas Institute,Microsoft Advertising, in an interview with eMarketer,April 16, 2009

This brand measurement complexity problem is not unique to theonline space, though the Internet adds another layer or two ofcomplexity with its interactive properties.

But it is essential to integrate online data with data from othermedia, because branding campaigns are clearly most successfulwhen message exposures come from multiple media—a mixtureof television spots, a magazine ad, targeted banner and onlinevideo ads, an outdoor billboard, an e-mail promotion and so forth.

“How can you possibly isolate the effect ofany particular piece of communication? Allof the problems that exist in measuringadvertising and marketing efficacy exist inevery environment—offline and online.”—Amy Fuller, group executive, worldwide consumermarketing/global products & solutions, MasterCardWorldwide, in an interview with eMarketer,April 28, 2009

Additional complexity comes from the fact that research andmeasurement firms have widely differing approaches andmethodologies, resulting in wildly varied results.As Mr. Lanctot ofRazorfish noted, “For a brand marketer, when there’s such adisparity in what would appear to be the most basic of metrics, itplants a seed of doubt about the reliability of the data sets or themeasurement program as a whole.”

Current Measurement Models Have LimitationsNone of the prevailing techniques for measuring online brandingimpact today are without flaws.

“Every type of measurement method, be it online media research,TV mediaresearch…has some level of errorassociated with it.There’s [no] magic bullet out there.” —Jon Gibs, vice president, mediaanalytics, Nielsen Online, in an interview with eMarketer,April 17, 2009

Site Intercept/Brand Impact StudiesAlthough widely popular with advertisers, the use of siteintercept/brand impact ad effectiveness studies, such as thoseconducted by Dynamic Logic or InsightExpress, is expensive whenmultiple studies are run and do not tell the whole branding story.Relying on the control versus test group approach, they work well formeasuring the brand impact of a specific ad or campaign,but lackscale and do not take into account the longer-term effects of brandadvertising unless they are run repeatedly over multiple campaigns.

In addition, the heavy use of such surveys has led to consumersurvey fatigue, where the same individuals are polled over andover.This can result in respondents who are not representative ofthe population being measured. Some, too, question the interceptmethod itself, since interrupting people with surveys while theyare surfing can lead to somewhat artificial results.

Mr. Hecht of VivaKi, in an interview with eMarketer, pointed outsome of the pitfalls of these intercept measurement techniques.When asked what the single biggest problem is with online brandmeasurement today, Mr. Hecht replied: “It’s the problem of doingeither custom one-off research which doesn’t scale, or doingstudies focused on individual campaigns which don’t give you thewhole story. It’s really hard to go out there and create a panel ofsize, or create a technique to do surveys that are not interruptiveand that are useful. I’m not seeing a lot of innovation in terms of acompany stepping into that void to provide the kind of researchand tools needed.”

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Mr. Hecht added,“The market’s at the pressure point, in a good way,and it’s going to force innovation and solutions to come forward.”

Another problem with the intercept survey method is that it is notvery good at measuring multiple forms of online ad messages. JoeLaszlo, director of research at the IAB, said, “One thing…that’slacking is a way to assess the effectiveness of your campaign if itruns across a broad swath of the Internet. For example, if it runsacross 15 different sites and in conjunction with a search enginecampaign, plus some social media.”

Panel Measurement SystemsThe alternative to brand intercept studies is panel measurementsystems, such as those deployed by comScore and Nielsen.Whilethis technique has the ability to measure actual surfing behavior, ithas its own limitations. Panels are best for measuring Websitetraffic and are less effective for measuring ad campaigns that mayrun across dozens or hundreds of sites.They also tend to miss orundercount smaller, long-tail sites.

In addition, there are the long-standing concerns about conflicting data:

■ The individual panel measurement firms often show widelydiffering numbers, such as for site traffic reach or audience size.

■ The numbers obtained from site-server logs are oftencontradicted by any given panel measurement firm, causingfrustration and confusion.

Measurement of Social and Video Are Even Further BehindWhile the widespread use of social and video sites by consumersevokes excitement (and sometimes a little fear) amongadvertisers, the measurement of advertising in theseenvironments is vastly underdeveloped. Most advertisers are stilltrying to understand the nature of this consumer activity and howit might translate into appropriate advertising messages, let alonehow to measure campaigns in these environments.

Social MediaIn a study by the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG)of 126 US marketing executives, more than one-third ofrespondents admitted they did not even measure social mediaactivities. One-half claimed to measure raw traffic and one-thirdmeasured clicks, both of which represent crude metrics, even byInternet standards.

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A full 59% of respondents said they never or hardly ever measuredthe ROI of social media marketing efforts. Only a little over 12% didso all or most of the time.

The primary reason so few measure social campaigns is that it isdifficult—59% of marketers in a separate Aberdeen Group studysaid social media was either “somewhat difficult” (39%) or “verydifficult” (20%) to measure. Note that the respondents here wereself-identified “best-in-class” companies.The survey also foundthat only 18% of marketers link activities on social media sitesback to revenues or other financial metrics.

Ways that US Marketing Executives Measure theEffectiveness of Social Media Marketing Efforts,October 2008 (% of respondents)

Incremental visits or unique visitors to Website

50.0%

Clicks

33.3%

Conversion to leads/revenues

31.7%

Page rank (e.g., Google)

25.4%

Buzz generated (as measured by BuzzMetrics or othermeasurement service)

22.2%

Reputation metrics

18.3%

Ranking on social media metrics sites (e.g., Technorati)

14.3%

We don't measure social media activities

34.9%

Note: n=126Source: Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), "Social Media inMarketing" as cited in press release, November 6, 2008

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Online Video Measurement: Promising, but Still Early DaysLike social media, the online video advertising market is boomingwith promise, but somewhat lagging in dollars.That is partly due toa laundry list of measurement issues.A central issue, though, is thetendency to focus on short-term, direct-response-type metrics thatignore the primary branding-oriented benefits of video.

“The instinctual reaction to try and show the sales impact of videocampaigns is misguided,” said Mr. Song of Microsoft Advertising.“We have studies that show that video, photo-sharing, weatherand social media placements look horrible in the online ROIequation because they’re upper-funnel. People don’t see ads onFacebook and then go buy something. Reach, frequency andGRPs…need to be there upfront.”

However, the lack of transparency for video advertising metrics isonly one of several problems confronting the format, according to2008 research from MarketingSherpa.

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Data Spotlight: How Online BrandAdvertising Can Influence EveryStep Along the Consumer PurchaseFunnel

The Internet can have an impact at every phase

along the consumer purchase cycle, from

creating initial awareness and interest for a

product, service or brand, to stimulating

purchases, to delivering post-sales support and

reinforcing brand loyalty. But what about the

measurement of this impact?

As a crude indicator of how marketers generally value onlinemedia, 36% of advertisers in a survey by Morgan Stanley said theInternet was “effective”—considerably higher than for any othermedia. It was not clear from the survey, though, whethermarketers were thinking primarily of search, display ads, their owncompany Websites or other online tactics.

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As validation, a more recent ANA study released in May 2009found that while television was rated the most important mediachannel in terms of effectiveness (64% of respondents), theInternet was a close second (61%).

Worst Problems with Video Advertising According toUS Marketers, October-November 2008 (scale of 1-5*)

Clutter 4.1

Ad-skipping (DVR, TiVo) 3.7

Media pricing/cost 3.5

Lack of transparency in metrics 3.4

Lack of quality media inventory 2.9

Difficulty finding mass target 2.8

Difficulty in buying media 2.3

Note: n=1,083; *1=no problem and 5=big problemSource: MarketingSherpa, "Video Marketing Survey," November 2008 ascited in "Marketing With Video Report: Online, TV & Mobile," December2008

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Effective Advertising Media According to USAdvertisers, 2009 (% of respondents)

Internet 36%

Newspapers/magazines 29%

Direct mail 26%

TV 22%

Radio 14%

Billboards 5%

Yellow pages 4%

Other 21%

Note: n=181Source: Morgan Stanley, "2nd Annual Local Ad Survey & '09 US AdvertisingOutlook," provided to eMarketer, March 31, 2009

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How Display Ads Impact Brand MetricsDynamic Logic, InsightExpress and other survey firms haveconducted countless studies—covering all types of productcategories and services—to measure the brand impact of onlinedisplay and video advertising.

The latest aggregated data from Dynamic Logic, based on 2,380campaigns measured through Q4 2008, found that thoserespondents exposed to online advertising registered slightlyhigher increases in key brand metrics, on average, than those whowere not exposed (that is, the control group).The delta lift(expressed as a point difference) for exposure to online ads was2.4 for aided brand awareness and 2.6 for message association.

103522

For additional information on the above chart, seeEndnote 103522 in the Endnotes section.

But the above figures are based on across-the-board averages.Importantly, the creativity and contextual relevance of adcampaigns can heavily influence the results.When Dynamic Logicdissected the data, top-performing campaigns boosted key brandmetrics by significantly higher levels than did the lowest-performing campaigns.

For example, aided brand awareness increased 8.9% for top-performing campaigns, versus only a 2.4% increase on averageand a drop of 2.3% for the lowest-performing campaigns. Similarly,top campaigns pushed up purchase intent by 7.1%, versus only1.3% on average.

103523

For additional information on the above chart, seeEndnote 103523 in the Endnotes section.

Dynamic Logic also compared campaigns for different categoriesof products and, again, found highly differentiated results. Forexample, on the measure of boosting purchase intent,entertainment, consumer packaged goods, home improvementand telecommunications categories performed much better thanaverage, while apparel, restaurant and retail did relatively poorly.

When it comes to measuring the efficacy of display ads onbranding metrics, context appears to matter.According to a studyby the Online Publishers Association (OPA) and Dynamic Logic,display ads within branded content sites (for example,NewYorkTimes.com,Weather.com) do a better job of boostingbrand metrics than when those same ads are placed within moregeneric portals or ad networks.

102827

For additional information on the above chart, seeEndnote 102827 in the Endnotes section.

Online Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics in theUS, Q4 2008* (% of respondents impacted)

Aided brand

awareness

Online ad awareness

Message association

Brand favorability

Purchase intent

Control 72% 25% 17% 42% 39%

Exposed 74% 30% 19% 44% 40%

Delta** 2.4 4.9 2.6 1.6 1.3

Note: n=2,380 campaigns and 3,889,602 respondents; *includes threeyears through Q4 2008; **delta defined as point difference in exposed vs.control groupsSource: Dynamic Logic provided to eMarketer, April 27, 2009

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Online Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics in theUS, by Level of Campaign Performance*, Q4 2008** (%of respondents impacted)

Top

Average

Bottom

Online ad awareness

14.0%

4.9%

-1.6%

8.9%

2.4%

-2.3%

Aided brand

awareness

Message association

9.5%

2.6%

-2.0%

Brand favorability

7.5%

1.6%

-3.5%

Purchase intent

7.1%

1.3%

-4.0%

Note: n=2,380 campaigns and 3,889,602 respondents; *best performersare the average of the top 20% of campaigns per metric and worstperformers are the bottom 20% of campaigns; **includes three yearsthrough Q4 2008Source: Dynamic Logic provided to eMarketer, April 27, 2009

103523 www.eMarketer.com

Interactive* Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics inthe US, by Site Category, January 2009 vs. August 2008(% change in delta**)

Branded content sites(OPA members)

MarketNorms® database

Portals

Ad networks

Aidedbrand

aware-ness

63%

-11%

-9%

-21%

Onlinead

aware-ness

7%

-8%

-3%

-7%

Message assoc-iation

8%

-10%

-6%

0%

Brand favor-ability

40%

-18%

-11%

-18%

Purchaseintent

0%

-13%

0%

-40%

Note: *involves the audience without having them click through or leavethe Webpage; **delta defined as point difference in exposed vs. controlgroupsSource: Online Publishers Association (OPA) and Dynamic Logic, "ImprovingAd Performance Online: The Impact of Advertising on Quality ContentSites," January 8, 2009

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Multiple studies prove, too, that online video ads can have anoutsize effect on standard brand metrics such as awareness,message association and purchase intent.

100581

Integrating Search and Display Ad MeasurementsIntuition (and plenty of data) tells us that search works best whenit is complemented by online branding efforts that createawareness, interest and desire among prospects.

First, as consumers ourselves, we realize that often the very idea ofsearching for a particular product or brand comes from having seenadvertising. Second, when we are looking to possibly purchasesomething and conduct a search inquiry, there is a natural tendencyto click on those search links that represent brand names we knowand trust, and to disregard unknown brands.

Most agree that online display ads can act as a stimulus for drivingsearches for brands or products—which of course is a key stepleading to purchase.

“There’s an image, a perception, a value that [consumers] have atthe point that they conduct a search.You know, it’s not likeconsumers are sitting there with no impression of a brand, untilthey conduct a search,” said Gian Fulgoni of comScore.

“If you see a display ad, there’s an incremental impact, but it’s notas great as the incremental impact of a search ad,” he added. “Ifyou combine the two, you get synergy and the combination isgreater than the sum.”

In an older yet still relevant study by the Microsoft-owned AtlasInstitute, 11 online advertisers were evaluated by measuring boththeir display ads and sponsored search clicks. In the study, Internetusers exposed to both search and display ads converted at a muchhigher rate than did those exposed to search or display alone.

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Similarly, a Specific Media survey found that online display ads canboost search activity for many product categories, especially fortravel and tourism, health, personal finance, automotive, news andmedia, and property and real estate; the average lift was 155%.

100100

In a January 27, 2009, interview with eMarketer, Beverly Thorne,senior vice president of marketing at Century 21 Real Estate LLC,explained the search/display connection for her brand as follows:“Our own empirical results showed us that our online investmentswere performing substantively better at generating leads. FromDecember 2007 to December 2008, we improved the efficiency ofour lead generation by reducing our cost per lead over 60%.At thesame time, we multiplied our number of leads by over 235%.”

The mastery of Web analytics plays a key role in tying display adsto search results.According to analysis by Steve Kerho,VP ofanalytics at Organic, display ads can increase a search ad’s click-through rate by 25% to 30%. Until recently, though, this influenceof display ads has typically not been measured by advertisers.

Ways in Which US Marketers See Online VideoEnhancing Customer Engagement, 2008 (% ofrespondents)

Increasing brand awareness 71.4%

Driving lead generation 47.2%

Enhancing loyalty/retention programs 44.7%

Converting customers 41.6%

Improving service and support 39.8%

Source: PermissionTV, "Online Video Survey Results," December 17, 2008

100581 www.eMarketer.com

Conversion Rate of US Internet Users Exposed toSearch Plus Display Advertising vs. Either Search Onlyor Display Advertising Only, 2006 (lift vs. display clickonly)

Display click only* 1.0x

Search click--no display impressions 3.3x

Search click plus display impressions 4.0x

Note: *baselineSource: Atlas DMT, "Where Can You Find Your Customer? Try theIntersection of Search and Display," July 21, 2006

099215 www.eMarketer.com

Impact of Online Display Ad Campaigns* on SearchActivity** in the US, by Advertiser Category,September 2007-August 2008 (% lift)

Travel and tourism 274%

Health 260%

Personal finance 206%

Automotive 144%

News and media 144%

Property and real estate 125%

Retail 69%

CPG 22%

Average lift 155%

Note: *among Specific Media clients; **ad-exposed consumers whosearched on brand and/or segment-related terms vs. unexposedconsumersSource: Specific Media as cited in press release, December 3, 2008

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Spotlight: Alltel

When mobile carrier Alltel measured the salesconversion impact of search clicks, display ads andthe synergy of the two, the “search click + displayad” combination resulted in a 56% lift versus asearch click alone.

Source: Atlas Institute, Microsoft

How Display Ads Drive Site TrafficAdvertisers often have the goal of driving qualified traffic to theircorporate or brand Websites. Based on numerous independentstudies, display ads can help get this job done.

For example, comScore evaluated 139 studies linking display adsto site visitation levels and found that the average lift in thenumber of visitors to the advertiser’s site—comparing visitationlevels of exposed and nonexposed groups—was 65% during thefirst week following the first exposure to an ad.Additional, thoughsomewhat muted, lifts were seen in the following three weeks.

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In another industry-specific example, a joint study by comScoreand analytics firm Crossix Solutions, in partnership with Yahoo!,evaluated the ability of display ads to drive consumers topharmaceutical advertisers’ Websites.After seeing online displayads, consumers were more than three times as likely to visitpharma advertisers’ Websites and twice as likely to fill a newprescription. In addition, exposed consumers were 92% morelikely to search for trademark names and phrases compared withthose who did not see the display ads.

The study was conducted among a base of 73 million consumersand concluded that the display ad campaigns provided anestimated return on media investment of 3X. Not a bad ROI.

How Display Ads Impact Online SalesFor most categories of products and services, consumers relyheavily on the Internet to do research, or “window shop,” prior tomaking the final purchase. Given this proclivity, marketers have anobvious opportunity to influence the awareness, preferences oreven behaviors of these online shoppers—at the precise timewhen they are in exploration or consideration mode. In the 90 daysleading up to a sale, consumers see an average of 18 ads for aproduct, according to Microsoft’s Atlas Institute.

eMarketer estimates that 152 million people, or 86% of Internetusers ages 14 and older, shop or browse online for possiblepurchases that may or may not occur online. Of course, thetendency to shop on the Web varies by category.A worldwidesurvey from Universal McCann indicates thatholidays/destinations, consumer electronics and travel are themost-shopped categories online.

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Advertiser Site Visitation Among US Internet UsersExposed to Online Display Ads, 2008

Control Test Lift

Week following first ad exposure 2.1% 3.5% 65.0%

Weeks 1-2 after first exposure 3.1% 4.8% 53.8%

Weeks 1-3 after first exposure 3.9% 5.8% 49.1%

Week 1-4 after first exposure 4.5% 6.6% 45.7%

Note: home, work and university locationsSource: comScore Brand Metrix, "How Online Advertising Works: Whitherthe Click," December 5, 2008

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Products and Services that Active* Adult InternetUsers Worldwide Have Researched Online, 2008 (% ofrespondents)Holidays/destinations 61.9%

Consumer electronics (e.g., TVs, PCs) 58.4%

Travel (e.g., flights, trains) 56.9%

Portable devices (e.g., MP3 players, mobile phones) 56.6%

Mobile phone services 56.0%

Computer software 52.3%

Films 49.8%

Music 48.8%

Books 46.2%

Cars/automobiles 43.7%

Home appliances (e.g., refrigerators, freezers) 39.1%

Game consoles/gaming 36.9%

Fashion (e.g., clothing, shoes) 35.0%

Financial services (e.g., credit cards, banking, insurance) 31.1%

Property/real estate 29.7%

Cosmetics 27.5%

Personal care (e.g., medicines, contact lenses, etc.) 24.1%

Groceries (food) 18.7%

Utilities (e.g., gas, electricity, etc.) 16.1%

Groceries (nonfood e.g., cleaning products) 15.5%

Alcoholic beverages 12.3%

Nonalcoholic beverages 9.1%

Note: n=17,000 ages 16-54; *daily or every other daySource: Universal McCann, "When Did We Start Trusting Strangers?,"September 2008

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A study by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates found that USonline shoppers would research high-consideration products andservices, such as cars, computers, new doctors, vacations andmobile phone plans, prior to making an actual purchase.

102845

But less expensive products are increasingly researched online aswell.According to Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst,consumers today access the Internet to look up even relativelylow-interest products such as shampoo. Said Mr. Grau,“Consumers might go to a shampoo manufacturer’s site to learnwhether a product contains paraben preservatives, or is tested onanimals or made from animal ingredients.They also might visit aretailer’s site to read customer reviews to hear from otherswhether a shampoo is really unscented or causes scalp irritation.Consumers also go to coupon sites to get additional savings on ashampoo purchase.”

Display/branding ads can also influence consumers to the point ofpurchasing products online, though rarely is the impact in the formof an immediate click.

In several studies, comScore evaluated the combined influencesof search and display ads on consumer online buying behavior.Search, given its obvious indication of purchase intent (that is,those who take the time to search for a product are usually in-market), has a stronger influence on consumer buying behaviorthan display ads alone. But when both search and display ads arecombined, the overall impact is significantly greater than that ofeither search or display ads individually.

For example, while display ads alone provided a 42% lift (testversus control) on the percentage of consumers making a retailpurchase online, and search generated a 121% lift, the combinationof search and display ads together produced a 173% lift. Further,the one-two punch of search and display resulted in significantlyhigher dollar spending per thousand consumers exposed.

104453104456

How Display Ads Influence Offline Purchases

“The current lack of visibility into offlinepurchasing [as a result of online displayadvertising] consistently leads to dramaticunderestimation of display advertising ROI.”—comScore white paper,“How Online Advertising Works:Whither the Click?” December 2008

Unfortunately, while online advertising can have a substantialimpact on offline sales, most marketers fail to measure thisimportant connection.

According to McKinsey’s June 2008 digital advertising survey of340 senior marketing executives worldwide, only 30% said theyeven considered the offline impact of online marketing. However,marketers that did look at those metrics were more satisfied withtheir online efforts and said they planned to increase spending onthem by 38%.

Products/Services that US Online Shoppers WouldResearch Significantly Before Buying, October 2008 (%of respondents)

Car 85%

New computer 83%

New doctor 83%

Vacation 75%

Mobile phone plan 72%

Vacuum cleaner 58%

Apartment 57%

Exercise plan 47%

Movie 43%

Book to read for pleasure 32%

Children's toys 31%

Shampoo 22%

Note: n=300 ages 18+Source: Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Inc. (PSB), "LinkShareTrendWatch Research: New Info Shoppers, Recession Buyers, and the 2009Online Shopping Outlook," January 30, 2009

102845 www.eMarketer.com

Online Retail Sales* from US Internet Users Exposedto Online Display and/or Search Ads, 2008

Control Test Lift

Display only $994 $1,263 27%

Search only $1,548 $2,724 76%

Search and display $2,723 $6,107 124%

Note: home, work and university locations; *monthly sales per thousandexposed consumers ranging from two weeks to three months after theinitial exposureSource: comScore Brand Metrix, "How Online Advertising Works: Whitherthe Click," December 5, 2008

104453 www.eMarketer.com

Percent of US Internet Users Who Make an OnlinePurchase on the Advertiser Site After Being Exposedto Online Display and/or Search Ads, 2008

Control Test Lift

Display only 1.0% 1.5% 42%

Search only 1.1% 2.4% 121%

Search and display 1.9% 5.1% 173%

Note: home, work and university locations; retail sites onlySource: comScore Brand Metrix, "How Online Advertising Works: Whitherthe Click," December 5, 2008

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To be fair, integrated measurement systems are often difficult andpricey—but in the long term, for marketers that measure searchand display advertising together, the results can be particularlyencouraging.A September 2008 comScore study found that byusing search and display ads in combination, marketers cansignificantly boost the dollar value of offline retail sales versususing either search or display only.

099198

As evidenced by a separate survey conducted by comScoreNetworks and Yahoo!, the search/display combination of admessages increased in-store purchases significantly. In the study,those online shoppers who had seen both ad types were 43%more likely to be converted to in-store buyers. In comparison,consumers who had seen only search ads were just 26% morelikely to be converted, while exposure to only display ads liftedconversion by just 6%.

086196

As a rule, the impact of online research/shopping behavior isgreater on in-store sales than Web-based sales.According tocomScore, for retailers with online and offline sales channels,approximately 68% of the impact of display ads was found in theoffline channel.

In the aggregate, Forrester estimates that in 2009,Web-influencedor cross-channel store sales will reach $758.8 million, dwarfing thesales transacted directly online. In other words, the Web’s influenceon sales is much greater than its direct e-commerce impact.

098510

Social InfluenceAlthough there is only limited evidence at this point, a few studiessuggest that advertising in social media can affect offline sales, too.

A partnership research study involving comScore, dunnhumbyand MySpace was conducted to track offline purchases of Internetusers exposed to ads for a personal-care brand on MySpace. Ofthe nearly 80 million people exposed to the campaign, fewer than1% visited an advertiser page on MySpace, though about one-halfwho did also visited the personal-care advertiser’s site.

Despite this small percentage of visitors, the campaign met its ROIobjective.According to Advertising Age (April 13, 2009), “[Thecampaign] produced $1.28 million in offline sales, as measured bydunnhumby, which compared purchases among shoppers notexposed to the campaign with purchases among those who were.”This resulted in an impressive 28% return on marketing investment.

Incremental Impact on Offline Sales per Thousand USConsumers Exposed to Search and Display Ads vs.Search Only and Display Only, 2007-2008 (% lift)

Search and display 119%

Search only 82%

Display only 16%

Note: n=137 tests from comScore Ad Effectiveness Database conducted in2007 and 2008Source: comScore, "Maximizing the ROI from Internet Advertising: LessonsLearned," September 8, 2008, provided to eMarketer, October 2008

099198 www.eMarketer.com

Effectiveness of Online Search and DisplayAdvertising Campaigns in Converting US OnlineResearchers to In-Store Buyers, 2007 (% change inconversions)

Consumers who saw a joint display and search campaign andsubsequently made an in-store purchase

43%

Consumers who saw a search campaign and subsequently madean in-store purchase

26%

Consumers who saw a display campaign and subsequently madean in-store purchase

6%

Source: comScore Networks Inc. and Yahoo!, "From Clicks to Bricks: TheImpact of Online Pre-Shopping on Consumer Shopping Behavior" as citedin press release, July 30, 2007

086196 www.eMarketer.com

US Retail Sales, by Channel, 2007-2012 (millions)

2007

$1,873,673

$503,734

$174,466

2008

$1,793,624

$629,228

$204,018

2009

$1,711,101

$758,792

$235,389

2010

$1,633,282

$886,232

$267,791

2011

$1,564,494

$1,007,609

$301,039

2012

$1,498,978

$1,120,709

$334,742

Offline sales Cross-channel sales Online sales

Source: Forrester Research, "The New Rules of eCommerce," September17, 2008

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In sum, marketers who fail to assess the cross-channel impact oftheir online branding efforts—particularly in this economicclimate—are significantly underestimating their effectiveness.Leading marketers are developing tracking mechanisms that allowfor comparisons between offline and digital marketing.And theydo not have to be complicated or expensive. For example, in orderto track sales across channels, retailers can use online couponsthat are redeemable on Websites and in stores.

“When you start to link in-store purchase behavior with onlineadvertising, it’s incredibly valuable,” said Mr. Lanctot of Razorfish.“[It] can help marketers understand how online marketing drivesoffline behavior.”

Three Factors for Online Branding SuccessYou can have all the precise numbers, measurement tools andmetrics at your disposal—and completely bomb with your online campaign if your creative messaging is substandard orbadly targeted.

1. Don’t Ignore the CreativeUnder the pressure of marketing accountability, and in our zeal toquantitatively measure everything that moves, marketers mustnot abandon creativity as an essential variable in online brandingsuccess. Measurement tends to look backward like a rearviewmirror, while creativity seeks to shine the headlights on a futureattitude or action—on the part of the consumer marketers aretrying to reach and influence.

As Jon Gibs from Nielsen Online said, “Creative is about 70% to80% of the effectiveness of advertising.”

“If your creative isn’t good, then you aren’tgoing to create engagement.” —Jeff Marshall,managing director, Pixel, a digital creative agency ownedby Publicis Groupe, as cited in The Wall Street Journal,May 6, 2009

Ken Mallon of Dynamic Logic, whose company has evaluated thebrand impact of thousands of online campaigns, was very vocalabout the need for good creative: “By far the biggest driver ofbrand impact success is the creative.The best ads that we see interms of performance online tend to be ones that almost have amagazine feel. They look nice; people think about things likehaving the right human form in there, the right product shot.”

Effective creative can be planned, according to Mr. Mallon.“We havea set of 10 standard best practices.The clients that follow those doreally well. But most people violate one or more of those routinely,and that’s why online advertising just isn’t that great on average.”

Some in the industry go so far as to say that the creative form ofonline advertising is not only critical, it transcends themeasurement issue entirely. In eMarketer’s interview with onlinepublishing pioneer Martin Nisenholtz, it was clear that findingways to make online ads more emotionally evocative isparamount to branding success.

“I don’t think the measurement issue is holding back brand dollarsonline.The bigger concern is that the Web still hasn’t found a wayto create the kind of emotional involvement that television createsfor people,” said Mr. Nisenholtz. “I can pretty much promise youthat television didn’t evolve as a dominant brand-building mediumbecause somebody started with a measurement. It evolvedbecause marketers said to themselves, ‘This is an incrediblypowerful way for us to communicate and transmit the emotivepowers of branding.’ And then they figured out how to measure it.In other words, measures are the tail, not the dog, and the doghasn’t yet been invented online. So we have to invent the dog.”

Also speaking from the online publisher’s side is Pam Horan,president of the OPA, who feels there has not been enough focuson the creative process and making online ads that engage withconsumers. “Creative is a big issue,” she said in an interview witheMarketer. “At the OPA, we’re trying to spur a creativerenaissance, so to speak, to show the opportunity for onlineadvertising to deliver a rich experience, tell a unique story and abrand-oriented message.”

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2. Size MattersWhen it comes to banners and other forms of display ads, larger,more intrusive ads tend to perform better than smaller ones, onaverage. Dynamic Logic and InsightExpress studies have provedthis correlation.

The size and shape of display banner ads can also affectengagement results, at least as measured by time spent.According to a time-exposure study conducted by LotameSolutions, the large 300x250 rectangle caused Internet users tospend significantly more time with this unit versus more narrow(and creatively limiting) ads, specifically 728x90 and 160x600banner ads. Consumers spent over 13 seconds with the rectangle(300x250), more than double the next-best-performing ad unit, the728x90.The large size and shape of these rectangles, which endup smack in the middle of valued content, means they are difficultto ignore.

103793

Taking such data into account,Web media publisher MSNBC.com,for one, is launching a new Website design that features larger-sizeads, as well as exclusive sponsorship placements, to attractbudget-conscious advertisers.

Furthermore, as one in a series of solutions to the creativechallenge, the OPA recently released three new innovative onlinead units designed to create brand experiences—within the ads.“The idea is to deliver the brand experience right on the pages ofthese rich content sites [e.g., OPA publisher sites] so people won’thave to click away,” said Ms. Horan.“These units are much larger….The marketer’s share of voice increases because the consumer isbeing exposed to a bigger ad for a longer period of time.”

3. Focus on Targeting and RelevanceThe Internet, partly because it is so fragmented, allows marketersmuch better opportunities to finely target their messages to theright individuals, and often at the right time and place.The “sprayand pray” approach may have worked in the past for traditionalmedia campaigns, but it most certainly does not work on the Web,where consumers almost expect ad messages to be morerelevant.We have the targeting technology, but we need to use it.

“Don’t count the people you reach, reach thepeople that count.” —David Ogilvy, world-renownedadvertising executive

Studies from Dynamic Logic and InsightExpress, for example,show that contextual placements, aligning brand messages thatare in sync with the surrounding editorial content, tend to be moreeffective for highly targeted categories, such as autos, pet care,baby and pharmaceutical products. Many other studies supportthe ability of contextual placements to boost results. In thatregard, online is no different than other media.

Another targeting technology experiencing renewed interestamong advertisers is behavioral targeting.With behavioral targeting,ads are served up to Internet users based on the past surfingbehavior of the individual consumer. Conceptually, this means thatadvertisers are buying audience, not Webpages or impressions.

This is good for the advertiser, since it makes for a more efficientmedia buy. It’s also good for the publishers, since they can selladvertising space that might have gone unsold.And finally, it ispotentially good even for consumers, since they are more likely tosee ads that are relevant to their interests.

Because behavioral targeting has the potential to efficiently getthe “right” ads in front of presumed interested parties, much likesearch ads, many in the industry see a resurgence coming in thistype of technique.

Time Spent with Banner Ads Among US InternetUsers, by Ad Size, January-February 2009

Total exposure time

(seconds)

Total impressions

(millions)

Average time per

impression (seconds)

300x250 867,700,956 66,466,701 13.05

728x90 161,590,364 29,925,805 5.40

160x600 97,539,062 51,938,746 1.88

Source: Lotame Solutions, Inc., "Time Exposure by Banner Size," providedto eMarketer, April 8, 2009

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“These improvements [behaviorally-targetedbanner ads], driven primarily by bettertargeting, will also likely boost aggregatespending, as advertisers moving online beginto get the same tracking and metrics thathave made search advertising so appealing.”—Ned May,director/lead analyst,Outsell, in BtoB magazine,April 6, 2009

Forrester Research currently estimates that nearly one-quarter(24%) of online campaigns rely on some form of behavioraltargeting data.This was substantiated by a February–March 2009survey by Forbes.com, which reported that 31% of senior-levelmarketers were using behavioral targeting. Finally, Datran Mediasurveyed marketers and found that 65% either already used orplanned to use behavioral targeting in the future.

Of course, behavioral targeting, which relies on cookie technology,has two serious obstacles:

■ Between 30% and 50% of Internet users regularly delete theircookies, rendering behavioral targeting virtually useless forthese consumers.

■ Mounting privacy concerns could end up derailing the use ofbehavioral targeting, or at least seriously limiting its impact.

Working Toward the Solutions forOnline Brand Measurement

Big Picture: Five Broad ApproachesAfter conducting 24 phone interviews, five video interviews,several round-robin Q&As and an online survey among industrymovers-and-shakers—not to mention poring over reams of datafrom studies and surveys—eMarketer sees the following fivebroad approaches as key to moving forward on the online brandmeasurement front:

1. The first critical step for marketers when developing anymeasurement programs must be to identify their brand’s topmarketing objectives.

2. Keep in mind that there is no single measurement system thatdoes it all, nor will there be a silver bullet in the future.

“I don’t think the white knight is going to beriding up on his little pony. It’s going to bethe industry working together.” —Pam Horan,president, Online Publishers Association, in an interviewwith eMarketer,April 27, 2009

3. A hybrid of traditional and digital approaches will be necessary,which will require a dramatic reinvention of measurement aswe know it.

4. The Internet must be rolled up within existing media mixmodels.There is a clarion call for the traditional metrics ofreach, frequency and GRPs to be integrated with the Web—butthis will only be the starting point, not the end game.

“There needs to be clear and broad industryeducation so everybody understandswhat’s happening.” —Bryan Wiener, CEO, 360i, in aninterview with eMarketer,April 2009

5. Connecting all the dots requires collaboration. Key industrystakeholders will need to work closely together to createseamless databases that talk to each other. One top priority:continuously refining attribution models that assignmathematical weights to the various digital footprints capturedalong the consumer buying cycle.

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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement

This report represents only a starting point towardigniting a broader, more collaborative coalition thatis dedicated to solving the online brandmeasurement challenge. As such, it will be made farstronger by the input, feedback and ideas from you,the reader. Please take the time to share yourcomments and thoughts. Collectively, we can beginto connect the dots.

It All Starts with Marketing ObjectivesYou can measure many things online, but if metrics do not alignwith business objectives, you will not go very far (and you’ll likelydrive yourself crazy).

In a survey by Spencer Stuart of senior-level marketers, the bestway to measure CMO effectiveness—beyond even profitability andrevenue measurement—was to make sure that “marketing isaligned with the business strategy,” as cited by 35% of respondents.

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“The most important factor is to have clearlydefined goals from the beginning.What areyou hoping to achieve? Focus on five or sixkey metrics that serve as your guidingmeasurement.” —Chris Thornton, chief marketingofficer, Definition 6, as quoted in Adweek, May 18, 2009

As Mr. Gibs of Nielsen Online stated at the Digital Publishing andAdvertising conference in New York on May 12, 2009, “Counting isnot the same thing as accountability.”When developing onlinecampaigns, one of the hardest challenges is to identify whatspecific actions or behaviors you really want to elicit from yourconsumer target, along with any emotional or qualitative leversthat enable them.

Supporting the “primacy of objectives” movement is Ms. Horan ofthe OPA, who told eMarketer in an interview:“It all comes back towhat the campaign goals are. If a marketer is looking forengagement, they have to decide what engagement is. Is it thenumber of views, is it a behavior post-view, is it a registration?...Itmay be that they’re looking at engagement as hover time…. Or itmight be whether a person clicked on something within the ad.”

Brand advertisers are all trying to figure out how onlineengagement can impact their brands, but the starting point ispinpointing the brand’s core marketing objective.

This was the case with Amy Fuller, group executive, worldwideconsumer marketing/global products & solutions of MasterCardWorldwide. In an interview with eMarketer, Ms. Fuller spoke ofengagement: “It really starts there—with asking, ‘What is brandhealth?’ Is it brand opinion, is it willingness to recommendsomething, is it willingness to pay a premium, is it beingmentioned in social networks, is it someone agreeing to receive a MasterCard?”

She added: “Then, and only then, can we start figuring out, ‘OK,if we’re happy with how we’re measuring engagement—whichmeans looking at qualified actions, not simply clicks—how do we capture what effect that has on those eventual brand health metrics?’”

Mr. Mendenhall of Hewlett-Packard put forward a similarperspective in an interview with eMarketer.What brand marketersare looking for, he said, is “very dependent on the strategy andobjectives for the specific product launch, service or promotion,and those vary. It really depends on what I’m trying to accomplish.Am I trying to achieve brand immersion, brand preference orbrand experience? Am I trying to generate a lead and thenmanage the lead through to a sale? Am I trying to drive e-commerce or build a lifetime relationship with a customer?”

Mr. Mendenhall also noted: “Then you think about how manypeople come through your front door. How many of those peoplestay? How long do they stay? Where do they go? What do they do?If you have a good CRM capability that pulls those analytics, andyou look at the behavioral and contextual footprints, it all becomesincredibly valuable to a marketer.These kinds of analytics becomea competitive differentiator.”

The Need for Uniform StandardsIn television media, advertisers have simple, defined and relativelylimited choices for creative executions, such as the standard 15-or 30-second spot. In radio, the standard is typically 30 or 60seconds. Magazines offer full pages, half pages and a discreteassortment of other choices.The measurement of offline mediahas become somewhat standardized as well.

Best Ways to Measure CMO Effectiveness Accordingto US Senior Marketing Leaders, 2008 (% ofrespondents)

Marketing is aligned with the business strategy 35%

Profitability 29%

Revenue 25%

Perceived value of marketing 7%

Brand awareness 5%

Note: n=200+Source: Spencer Stuart, "Isolating the Marketing DNA: The Essential Skillsand Qualities of the New CMO," November 2008

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The Nielsen ratings numbers for television, for example, are sostandardized they operate as the buying and selling currency forthe $70 billion TV business. Of course, few will admit that theactual measurement process itself is less than perfect.

“People in broadcast sort of chuckle at theTower of Babel that we in digital provide byway of data, as they all implicitly agree tolive and die on a ‘standard’ that everyoneknows is a proxy for a proxy, with brandingstandards that are, well, imprecise.” —MarkNaples, managing partner,WIT Strategy, in an e-mail toeMarketer, June 2, 2009

But on the Internet, there is a seemingly unlimited number of adformat options available as well as endless choices for themeasurement of online ad campaigns.

Consequently, there is now a tension in the industry betweenlocking down standards—including agreed-upon definitions andcommon measurement platforms—and allowing for innovation,flexibility and creativity. Certainly, most can agree that standards fordefinitions are an absolute must. For example, stakeholders shouldall have the same thing in mind when they talk of impressions.

This was emphasized by Jim Meskauskas of ICON International inan e-mail to eMarketer: “We should certainly start somewhere bydefining how we articulate the ‘facts’ of our discipline (reach,frequency, impressions, engagement).”

However, Mr. Meskauskas provided an important proviso: “But ifwhat we are talking about pertains to the amorphous (e.g.,engagement), then how we talk about it will also be amorphous.”

So what about standardization of measurement platforms? Manyworry that a single measurement technology or company willenjoy a monopoly, similar to the Nielsen model for televisionbuying. Others are concerned that a premature, one-size-fits-allmeasurement model will stifle innovation and creativity in theindustry.The latter concern, according to some, is unwarranted.

Said David Smith, CEO of interactive agency Mediasmith, in a June5, 2009, interview with eMarketer, “Yes, innovation is critical—butonly after you’ve run all the numbers, and only as long as you staywithin the guidelines.” In other words, the structure imposed by auniform measurement process will actually provide freedom toinnovate and endlessly test creative options.

“[We need] industry standard measureseveryone can agree on. Measures that gobeyond just standard clicks and trafficmeasures.” —Yosi Heber, president, Oxford HillPartners LLC, in response to an eMarketer poll fielded byInsightExpress,April 2009

In the poll eMarketer organized for this report, 46% of respondentsagreed with the following statement:

“Single standards for ad metrics and online performancesystems, set by a leading industry group such as the IAB,are the major step needed to boost the growth of brandadvertising online.”

Further, only 27% of respondents disagreed, leaving 27% on the fence.

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Stronglydisagree

10.8%Disagree

16.2%

Neutral27.0%

Agree32.4%

Strongly agree13.5%

US Marketing Executives' Opinions on the Need for aSingle Set of Online Advertising MeasurementStandards, April 2009 (% of respondents)

Note: n=37; numbers may not add up to 100% due to roundingSource: eMarketer, "Online Brand Measurement Survey" conducted byInsightExpress, June 2009

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When asked to elaborate on why they agreed or disagreed,respondents were mixed in their opinions on the need formeasurement standards. Some felt that the industry needsstandards to succeed, while others believed they would be “niceto have,” but would not “make or break” the growth of brandadvertising online:

■ “There needs to be an industry-defined standard on which tobase effectiveness instead of publishers, marketers andagencies setting their own baselines.”

■ “The industry needs common ground to set benchmarks andmanage multiple sources of data as a base for broaderdiscussions about what drives marketing success online.”

■ “Standards are useful, but the IAB has tried many times toimpose them. Realistically, standards won’t be imposed—they’llbe adopted based on which standards are useful and providevaluable feedback to their users.”

■ “The IAB is going to face big issues around this effort. In many waysthe tent is simply too big for them to be effective in these efforts.”

■ “It can certainly help the industry to have standards and bestpractices for ad metrics and online performance systems.However, this will have little effect on the growth of brandadvertising online.Marketers will need to determine forthemselves (in a variety of ways) the value of online for brandingand the metrics associated for their brands. In all likelihood, this willneed to play out in bigger scenarios such as market mix modeling.”

The director of research from the IAB, Mr. Laszlo, supports somelevel of standardization, as he told eMarketer in an interview.“Themarket as a whole should start to narrow down the total numberof metrics,” he explained. “There are so many different things tomeasure that it’s hard to say which metrics are the best to use.”

Representing the publisher point of view is Ms. Horan of the OPA.“In the long run,” she noted in an interview with eMarketer, “wouldit be great for us to have a single standard to measure the brandimpact of online advertising—something that’s interchangeablebetween all the media? Yes. I hope it happens in my lifetime.”

Media agency executives, who are tasked with much of thehands-on work that goes into measurement, were similarlypredisposed toward standards. Speaking passionately in favor ofconsistent standards for brand measurement was Cary Tilds ofMindshare-Team Detroit. “Consistently measuring tactics fordigital advertising for their branding effect provides the marketerthe most relevant information,” she said in an interview witheMarketer. “Random acts of measurement are OK, but they don’tprovide a consistent approach. If you are consistent, you canimprove and evolve.”

Ms.Tilds added,“I want to focus on the creativity of the actual mediadeployment and not argue about audience composition or overhow to measure something. I want to debate the next big idea.Theindustry needs consistent dialogue, agreement on standards ofmethodology and support from the IAB, the 4A’s and the ARF.”

“[We need] enough standards to establish astrong foundation, but not so many thatbrands are constrained. [We need] morework on conversion attribution…andadvances in social graph measurement andanalytics.” —Jeff Lanctot, chief strategy officer,Razorfish, in an interview with eMarketer,April 28, 2009

Before we jump to the conclusion, however, that measurementstandards represent the panacea everyone is hoping for, Mr.Lanctot of Razorfish, who personally believes in the formation ofstandards, added this sobering perspective: “We tend to put toomuch weight on standards.There’s this view that once we havesome better brand measurement standards in place, the dollarswill flow. I think that’s overly optimistic.”

Q&A: Should the industry create a standardizedonline brand measurement platform?

“There really isn’t a standardized way of looking at brand health,online or offline. Rather than trying to standardize, why not developa few different ways of looking at brand health?” Full Interview

“I don’t think it would be a bad idea. It could be accomplishedthrough a research consortium or through agency networks.VivaKi and The Pool is an example. (The Pool is a group of onlinevideo suppliers such as Hulu and CBS and marketers that includeAllstate and Purina that are developing a replacement for thestandard preroll video ad unit.) There is an opportunity to shareinsights and data with other companies. I think standards wouldhelp everybody in the industry.” Full Interview

Amy FullerMasterCard Group Executive,WorldwideConsumer Marketing/Global Products & Solutions

MasterCard Worldwide,financial services marketer

Curt HechtPresident

Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center (includes Digitas, Starcom MediaVestGroup, ZenithOptimedia and Denuo)

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“The market as a whole should start to narrow down the totalnumber of metrics.There are so many different things to measure that it’s hard to say what the best metrics are.You runthe risk of having so much data that you can’t draw the story outof it.” Full Interview

“It’s not the industry that would create standards, it’s an independentresearch firm that would work with the IAB. It’s probably a couple ofyears off.Nielsen is the likely one to get that going.”Full Interview

Integrate Online and Offline Measurement and MetricsBeyond developing uniform standards within the online admeasurement world, there is the larger issue of integratingmeasurements across online and offline media.

In the previous section, we reviewed survey data from the 4A’s andANA that showed clients and their agencies are not where they’dlike to be in terms of integrating measurement data from theiroffline and online advertising efforts. In their related white paper,however, the 4A’s and ANA offered up some concrete advice fordealing with the integration issue, including these six tips:

1. Educate yourself. Become as educated as possible on digitalmedia; network with others who have paved the way bysuccessfully incorporating digital into their campaigns.

2. Set goals and objectives. Set clear goals and understandyour business objectives upfront.

3. Understand your consumer. Think about the consumers youare trying to reach, and understand where they go online andwhat they do there.

4. Be willing to test and learn. Understand that early pilots and“failures” can lead to big wins later. Reserve at least a smallportion of your budget for experimentation.

5. Integrate your planning. Digital and traditional media mustbe planned together, not in silos. Do not regard digital as aseparate “add-on.” Keep in mind that no media vehicle ormarketing discipline succeeds on its own.

6.Measure. Commit to metrics and analytics,and use them to makeyour business case.Agree upfront on the definition of success.

In an interview with eMarketer,ANA CEO Bob Liodice underscoredthe need for marketers to look at the whole media pie whenassessing online brand measurement. Said Mr. Liodice, “Ourconcern is about brand measurement in total, online or offline.Thevehicle or approach to brand measurement is far less relevantthan what it is we are trying to accomplish.”

He continued: “As we bundle and integrate marketing, rather thanasking whether online, television, radio, print or outdooradvertising is working, we should ask, how the heck are all ofthese things working together? It’s not effective to look at digital inisolation from the rest of the marketing mix.”

Many in the online ad industry, from all different vantage points,feel strongly that measurement success will only come if theInternet adopts the very same metrics used by traditional media.

“The best thing would be to measure onlinebranding the way we measure offlinebranding: awareness, reach, impact,recognition—coupled with response all theway to purchase.” —Jim Sterne, founder of theeMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and chairman ofthe Web Analytics Association, in response to aneMarketer poll fielded by InsightExpress,April 2009

Embrace Traditional Media MetricsHaving established that standards for online measurement wouldbe helpful and that there is a growing need to integrate online andoffline metrics, this raises a serious question:Would it make sensefor the Internet to adopt the standard media planning and buyingmetrics of the traditional world—namely reach, frequency andGRPs? There is a growing consensus in the industry that yes, itdoes make sense.

“[We need] basic reach, frequency and GRPforecasts for planning and post-campaignanalysis that have some semblance toreality, [so there is an] ability to reconcile.”—Young-Bean Song, senior director of analytics and theAtlas Institute for Microsoft Advertising, in an interviewwith eMarketer,April 16, 2009

In the interviews eMarketer conducted with industry leaders forthis report, a strong majority conceded that it is now time for theInternet to embrace the GRP, reach and frequency metrics longused by television, radio and print advertisers. But there were alsoa few dissenters.

Jeff LanctotChief Strategy Officer

Razorfish,Microsoft Corp.-owned digital agency

Wenda Harris MillardPresident

Media Link LLC, brand consulting firmImmediate Past Chair–InteractiveAdvertising Bureau

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The resistance thus far to GRP adoption has been twofold. First,those pioneers who helped create the market for onlineadvertising—envisioning its limitless possibilities for interaction andengagement—are loath to shackle it down with the old metrics ofthe past. Second, formulating and applying GRPs to the online spaceis just plain difficult.As David Smith of Mediasmith told eMarketer inan interview,“The [GRP models for online advertising] already exist,but most people just don’t understand the math.”

But now the tide is turning and the pressure is on. GRPs aremaking their way online.

“You will never see P&G and Unilever andthose guys spend more than single digits[millions] online unless we give them reach,frequency and GRP numbers.Their businessmodels are based on media mix modelswhere those are the inputs and outputs.” —Young-Bean Song, senior director of analytics and the AtlasInstitute for Microsoft Advertising, in an interview witheMarketer,April 16, 2009

Without doubt, the strongest proponent of GRP adoption was Mr.Song of the Atlas Institute (part of Microsoft).A pioneer in the fieldof online measurement and analytics, Mr. Song argued thatadopting GRPs is “fundamental” to the Internet’s growth as anadvertising vehicle.

“[In the branding world], we don’t have a perfect view of ROI,”he explained. “So we revert back to something that we can alllatch onto, something that makes apples-to-applescomparisons—fundamental metrics around reach and frequency. So marketers ask, ‘Am I reaching my target audienceand am I doing that cost-effectively?’”

He added: “As soon as…we give advertisers the reach, frequencyand GRP numbers they want, they’ll plug those into theirregression and media mix models and they’re going to say, ‘Wow, Ishould be spending 12% of my budget online.’” (Note:The currentindustrywide allocation is just under 10%.)

Mr. Song continued, “Ten years from now we’re still going to bebuying media on a CPM basis.These foundational metrics aren’tobsolete and you can reconcile them on the back end with ad-serving data. It’s something both publishers and advertisers canlook at and agree on together.”

Many in the research field agree that GRPs should be adopted for online.

“I think one would be crazy to not continue to use that [GRP]metric,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore. “What it’s tellingyou is how many times you reached the person with an ad, andhow many people you’ve reached. I mean, if you don’t have that, Idon’t see how you can really understand the intricacies of yourmedia plan or compare it across media….That’s the way media issold.We produce GRP measures directly analogous to TV today,directly analogous to print, to radio.”

Or, as John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, put it in an interviewwith eMarketer: “Advertisers have to say, ‘I don’t care how manyimpressions I buy, I need to reach 10 million women age 18 to 24.’”

Mr. Hecht of VivaKi was also adamant that GRPs are necessaryfrom an agency perspective. “Yes, I think reach is relevant,” he saidin an interview with eMarketer. “The form in which you measure itisn’t as relevant. GRPs keep things simple. Going out and reachinga lot of people is relevant.”

Representing the online publisher’s side, Jim Spanfeller ofForbes.com and Ms. Horan of the OPA agreed that GRPs areneeded online.

“In the offline world, GRPs are the metric,” said Mr. Spanfeller. “Inthe online world, most of the major online spenders have come upwith their own methodology for online GRPs, but currently, there isno fully realized version of gross rating points for the Web.Weshould measure reach, we should measure frequency and thefour basic brand metrics.”

Ms. Horan noted, “Ultimately, I think [GRPs] is where we need toget to.We need a metric that will allow marketers to mix andmatch and to allocate dollars across whatever the platform is.”

Marketers also seem to be on board.As one brand marketerexpressed it in the eMarketer/InsightExpress poll: “We need to beable to model online along with other (traditional) media channelsin a standardized fashion to create reach and frequency. Digitalproviders continue to resist this.We believe that until this is donethere won’t be the kind of scale online providers are looking for.This does not replace the other valuable and distinctmeasurement options currently available; it simply provides thetools needed to plan at the brand level.”

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Dissenting Opinions on the GRP IssueNot everyone agrees with the GRP position. In an interview witheMarketer, senior marketer Ms. Fuller of MasterCard stated herreasons for taking the opposing view.

“I’m not looking for the same metrics,” such as GRPs, Ms. Fullerexplained. “We have different expectations….We use digitalmedia to tell more complicated stories and drive engagement.The expectation for offline media is to deliver reach andfrequency. I think they operate differently; I’m not looking foridentical metrics [online].”

From the research side, Mr. Gibs of Nielsen felt the GRP had lost itsrelevance in the highly fragmented media world in which we live.

“The GRP metric is like a 50-year-old metric,” he said. “It’s verywell-designed for when there was a world of three TV networks.It’s less well-designed for a world where there are hundreds andhundreds of TV networks and millions and millions of Websites.”

Instead of reverting back to traditional GRPs, Mr. Gibs argues thatthe industry should seek to build a new type of currency model forWeb measurement, one based on quality of data andtransparency: “Transparency means that the clients need to knowexactly what goes into it [the model] so they can trust thenumbers that are being used for the buying [process].”

Another problem cited about GRPs is that they are too limiting.Amarketer relying solely on reach and frequency would fail tocapture the whole picture of exposure to online advertising,particularly the potentially rich information that comes from onlinesearches, social sites, mobile activity or video streams. Speakingwith eMarketer from the agency perspective, Mr. Lanctot ofRazorfish indicated that traditional media mix models, includingthe reliance on GRPs, are falling apart.

“Looking beyond measurement within a specific media channel, themedia mix models begin to break when you include digital in themix,” said Mr. Lanctot.“Consumer behavior online and on mobiledevices is all over the place. Senior marketers are opening theireyes and saying, ‘OK, it’s time to forget everything that I knew.’”

He suggested that the solution lies with a hybrid approach, usingboth panels and server-side data. He anticipates that theaggregation and merging of different data sets will get us closer tothe truth and increase the trust advertisers have in the data results.

Also from the agency perspective,Yaakov Kimelfeld,vice president ofdigital research and analytics director at MediaVest USA,worried thatGRP metrics overemphasize demographics at the expense ofpotentially more meaningful determinants such as attitudes andbehavior.Mr.Kimelfeld wrote in an August 1,2008,article inMediaPost,“Focusing on reach and frequency limits a digitalcampaign’s ability to serve ads based on specific audiencecharacteristics other than demographics,such as previous purchasesand online behavior. In the end, these narrower criteria may be moreeffective in predicting future purchase behavior than demographics.”

Finally, in an interview with eMarketer, Jim Dravillas, senior partner-executive director of analytics at Neo@Ogilvy, posed a question forproponents of the GRP: “Why does the Internet have to modelitself on traditional modes of measurement? The offline media hasto adapt to the digital environment. My end goal is not the GRPitself, my end goal is the impact.”

However, Mr. Dravillas conceded that traditional metrics do have a place at the table. “The GRP is still very helpful from a planningstandpoint, but not as a success measure. I want to try to reach as many of my target audience as I can in the most effective way possible.”

How to Make the GRP Work for OnlineThe GRP metric is basically a blunt measure for how many peopleyour advertising reaches, and at what level of frequency.

Mr. Song of the Atlas Institute said it best in his interview witheMarketer: “The problem with the online impression—which is theclosest thing to a GRP right now—is that it doesn’t have adenominator.What I mean by that is, how many impressions did Ideliver to the universe of women 18 to 45? That’s thedenominator.The GRP is just the numerator. How many grossimpressions did I deliver? [Online,] it’s hard to know what thedenominator is. It’s hard to know how many of those impressionsthat you served actually went to women 18 to 45.This is an areawhere the TV and print folks actually have an advantage.”

From a branding perspective, Mr. Song sees marketers knowingmore about their audience in traditional media than they doonline. “You actually know less in the online space with the sameamount of data than you would in the offline space.You don’tknow what the frequency is going to be.You don’t know whatpercentage of the target audience you’re going to reach.The onlything you know that’s in common is the number of impressions.”

In his interview with eMarketer, Mr. Song went on to say that Atlasand other groups, working in collaboration, are figuring out waysto measure the elusive denominator—the total universe of thetarget population.

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“We’re not the only ones working on this. It’s also Google,Yahoo!,AOL and online networks that have large, registered user basesand ad-serving technology to track everything on a census leveland all the gross impressions.They will combine data sets toprovide traditional advertisers reach, frequency and GRPs.As faras I’m concerned, that’s the foundation,” he explained.

Taking another tack on the GRP front is Ms.Tilds, senior vicepresident at WPP’s agency Mindshare-Team Detroit. Based on thenotion that online and offline measurement platforms need to“talk” to each other, the agency has developed a new metric calledthe iGRP, or Internet gross rating point.This metric was built toallow for cross-platform measurement between television andonline video buys. Said Ms.Tilds, “The iGRP’s purpose is to confirmhow to go about determining audience reach andfrequency…planning against audience composition.”

She views the iGRP, currently only used for online video, as merely astarting point in a long evolution:“The GRP is still very relevant.However, we need to evolve the GRP/iGRP as we evolve the mediadelivery and accountability across multiple screens and channels.”

Get Smart About Attribution ModelingAttribution modeling is all the rage in the marketing community.Essentially, it seeks to attribute different quantitative weights tothe various consumer touchpoints in an advertising campaign,from banner ads and sponsorships to online video ads, brandWebsite interactions and search activity.

As such, attribution modeling is essentially an offshoot of themedia mix modeling that traditional advertisers have been doingfor years. Media mix modeling helps advertisers determine whichmedia inputs will have the most effective (and efficient) impact onsales.They rely heavily on databases, which must be synced up toprovide a holistic view of results.

But attribution models need to go beyond the limited data-capturecapabilities of today’s media mix models and capitalize on the uniqueinformation provided by digital platforms,particularly data relating tointent.As Mr.Kimelfeld,analytics director at MediaVest USA,explained on a phone call with eMarketer, the Internet offers up digitalfootprints that can imply intent to act leading to purchase.

In his February 1, 2009, article in MediaPost, Mr. Kimelfeld broughtup the example of consumers looking to purchase a car. He wrote,“The Internet [opens] up a world of searching, price comparison,consumer reviews and other user resources that have generatedhard data proving that consumers are actively considering theadvertised model—long before they start showing up at thedealership. Captured on a daily or even hourly basis, theseevents…point to the next level of the campaign effects hierarchy,a more advanced one than branding:They indicate consumers’intent to act toward the purchase.”

“Marketers need to understand not only what worksretrospectively, but how they can use data proactively to makebetter decisions about the audiences they buy and the way theydeliver messages,” said Konrad Feldman, CEO and co-founder ofQuantcast, in an interview with eMarketer. “When you have aprogrammatic way of using that sort of insight across a broadrange of media, you begin to break down barriers.”

“In the case where search has to compete fora budget against other activities, it wins, asit generally delivers the most efficientreturns. Only companies that do attributionmodeling and look at media spendsholistically can allocate budgetsappropriately across search, display andother activities.” —Anonymous agency executiverespondent from eMarketer/InsightExpress poll,April 2009

The absolute level of ad spending behind interactive has typicallybeen too small to meet the thresholds required in large andcomplex media mix models.As Mr. Fulgoni said, “I don’t think[media mix models] are sensitive enough to pick up the impact ofonline.As time goes by and Internet spending continues to grow,these models will become more relevant.”

Another challenge with attribution models is the sheer complexity introduced by digital variables in an already complexmodeling system.

“When models begin to approach thecomplexity of the reality they’re trying toexplain, they become just as difficult tointerpret—and insight is lost.” —James B.Ramsey, renowned mathematician and economicsprofessor at New York University; father of eMarketer CEOGeoff Ramsey

As Mr.Kimelfeld of MediaVest put it, the biggest challenge withattribution models is devising methods for “attributing consumerintent manifestations to individual media platforms and campaigns.”

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Exploring SolutionsThe bottom line: Mastering how to build effective attributionmodels is going to come down to plain old hard work.

“There’s a lot of heavy lifting to be done in terms of making theappropriate attributions and setting up rules because too manymarketers are crediting the last click,” said Bryan Wiener, CEO of360i, in an interview with eMarketer. “The main complaint is thatthe last click is getting a disproportionate amount of the credit,and the earlier paid clicks—from display advertising, e-mail andother things that contributed to the consumer reaching adecision—are not getting appropriate credit.”

Several key players in the online advertising ecosystem are rollingup their sleeves to develop and refine solutions for modeling,including the Atlas Institute (part of Microsoft), comScore andNielsen Online.

Mr. Gibs refers to Nielsen’s version of the concept as “mediaallocation modeling,” which applies weights to “each creative orplacement or whatever.And what’s important is then you can startsaying, ‘OK, so what’s the role of search?’ and you can layersearch on top.You can say, ‘What’s the role of that microsite Ibuilt?’ OK, then you can layer the microsite on top. ‘What’s the roleof video versus rich media versus standard display?’ OK, then youcan layer them on top.”

Ultimately, attribution models should be designed to tightly aligndata results to the marketer’s key objectives, which in many casesare some sort of sales activity.

“Remember why you’re advertising.You arenot advertising for clicks or [gross ratingpoints].What you’re advertising for is to sellme stuff or change perception, and that’swhat we need to be measuring against.”—Carrie Frolich, managing director, digital, Mediaedge:cia,as quoted in Advertising Age, May 18, 2009

As an example, Nielsen, in a partnership with Yahoo!, is able tomatch online ad exposures to a panel of shoppers through itsHomescan unit. Said Mr. Gibs, “If a person saw an ad and theybought a product, it means the ad made them buy the product. So,it’s a fairly straightforward connection between the two.”

Mr. Hecht of VivaKi has a slightly different view of the problem and,therefore, the solution. “The most broken part of Web[measurement] today is the attitudinal piece,” he said toAdvertising Age on May 18, 2009. He believes “the killer app will bea sort of always-on brand-health meter” that he could dive into ona regular basis to gauge online ad effectiveness.

“If everyone used a transactions-basedmodel, we would have a more accountable,defensible advertising model, which in turnwould create more stability and confidencein the interactive industry.” —Scott Knoll, generalmanager and vice president of display media, DatranMedia, in an article on iMedia Connection, May 5, 2009

Scott Knoll, general manager and vice president of display mediaat Datran Media, said the ultimate solution is to marry three sets ofconsumer data into a single database that captures:

■ Online activity across Websites, search, e-mail, video and mobile

■ Anonymous demographic information at the household level

■ Transactional behavior data that can provide definitive results forROI-minded marketers

Mr. Knoll provided an example from one of his clients: “A nationaltourism agency wanted to run a new advertising campaign andneeded direction on campaign targeting. Drawing on transactionaland anonymous demographics data from a variety of sources, wefound that consumers who responded the best to the agency’sadvertising were single couples, with no children, incomes in the$100k range, and between the ages of 26 and 45. Better datameans marketers can make business and creative suggestionswith new data insights.With this information, the agency wasbetter armed to target their future campaigns to consumers whowould be the most receptive.”

Another example of successful attribution modeling comes fromChrysler and its ad agency, Organic, which designed a mediamodeling system that helped the automaker allocate its marketingdollars more efficiently, including between digital and offlinemedia.A key insight making the model possible was the fact that70% to 80% of consumers typically research car purchases online.

“In refining the model, Organic learned how certain ads spurpeople to visit the Web,” reported The Wall Street Journal in May2009. “It then figured out which Web activities translate into actualauto sales. Some actions, such as scheduling a test drive online orentering a ZIP code to locate a dealer, are a good predictor ofsales….The result was a system that predicted 2008 sales withinone percentage point of actual sales figures for its Jeep brands.”

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Partnerships Are Proliferating Partnerships between multiple industry players are rapidlyemerging with the objective of amassing and statistically fusingtons of data culled from numerous touchpoints. Suchcollaborations are designed to get a holistic picture of consumers,and the impact advertising has on their attitudes and behaviors, allthe way down to the transactional level.

Panel-based measurement firms such as comScore, Nielsen,Quantcast and Compete, for example, are all working onmultidisciplinary databases that can be mined to connectadvertising exposure with behaviors such as search, sitevisitation, video-viewing and, ultimately, purchases.

“We don’t think there is one magical metric.You need to triangulate across several datapoints.” —Stephen DiMarco, chief marketing officer,Compete, as quoted in Advertising Age, May 18, 2009

As another example, Datran Media, a digital marketing technologycompany with a large database of e-mail and postal addresses, isable to append offline information through its collaboration withnumerous offline data sources, including Acxiom (householddata), IXI (financial data), MindSet Marketing Solutions (healthcaredata) and NextAction (retail data). This bundling of third-partyverified data, packaged under the product name Aperture, allowsmarketers to better understand and measure the audience seeingand responding to their ads, whether those ads are banners, richmedia units or video ads.

Similarly, Omniture and WPP’s Kantar Group are launching a jointeffort that brings together data and analytics assembled from e-mail, search, display ads and traditional forms of media, creating a“multichannel view,” according to John Mellor, executive vicepresident at Omniture.Also involved in the partnership areDynamic Logic and TNS Media Compete.

Finally, research powerhouse Nielsen is combining informationfrom its recently acquired IAG unit with its Homescan data toevaluate the link between attitudes and sales.

“It’s going to take a truly concerted effort onthe part of publishers and otherintermediaries to create inventory that istruly attractive to the creative communityand can be exploited effectively by thecreative community.” —Martin Nisenholtz, seniorvice president for digital operations,The New York TimesCo., in an interview with eMarketer,April 2009

Championing the View-ThroughAnother form of attribution modeling is the view-throughconversion—a metric that captures what happens after theconsumer is exposed to advertising, without the consumernecessarily clicking on any ads. Unlike immediate clicks, view-throughs allow for the lag effects of time.

Mr. Song of Atlas describes it as follows: “People [are] exposed toads, don’t click on them, but actually end up on the advertiser’ssite to convert.We refer to them as view-through conversions….There are about 10 times the number of view-through conversionsas there are click-through conversions. [But] the view-throughconversions, as much as people want to add them to their ROImetrics, are not a measure of direct response.They’re a measureof whether you’re reaching the right audience.”

Mr. Song continued, “I call it behavior-based target reach analysis.So instead of a reach analysis that’s based on demographics, it’sactually based on the behavior of people coming to your site,people who are turning into leads.”

View-throughs are helpful because they account for the fact thatbranding takes place over time. Many advertisers attach zeroweight to view-throughs—often simply because they fail tomeasure them. Others give view-throughs all the credit forwhatever results are seen. However, sophisticated tools are beingdeveloped to identify the ideal weight—between 0% and 100%—for any given campaign.

View-through measurements are offered by a number of playersin the market, including Google/DoubleClick, Microsoft/Atlas andcomScore. In one study, comScore measured the impact of view-throughs over time and found that they lifted the likelihood aconsumer would visit the advertiser’s Website.The average liftwas highest (up 54%) in the two weeks after exposure; however,even after four weeks, the lift continued (up 45.7%).

Building New Measurement Models for Social andVideo EnvironmentsAdvertising on social networks and certain video sites can providemarketers with new and exciting opportunities to actually listen toconsumers and find out how their brands and advertising campaignsare perceived in real time.While the measurement of theseinteractions is still in its early stages, there is a huge payoff for thosewilling to invest the time,energy and money to innovate.Moreover,the benefits go way beyond the confines of the social media platform.

“I view listening as an important analytic,” said Mr. Mendenhall ofHewlett-Packard. “As you employ listening and other analytics,they start to drive your strategy at a macro-level. They eitherreinforce your strategy or correct it, and give you opportunities forideas, products, services, segments and/or geographies thatyou’re not even in.”

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Doug Weaver, founder and CEO of the Upstream Group, said socialmedia can be like a Richter scale for marketers wanting to gaugethe impact of their entire marketing efforts.

“For perhaps the first time ever, marketers can put a campaign ora message out into the public consciousness and then really hearand see its impact,” wrote Mr.Weaver in his May 2009 newsletter.“A brand can throw rocks into the pond and then measure boththe quantity and quality of the ripples that follow. By all means,pour your time, money and resources into this channel to reallyunderstand the full ROI of all your marketing activity.”

Such listening efforts conducted online can provide marketers witha sort of inexpensive “sounding board” for creative concepts theymight want to run offline.This can help advertisers save money bytesting creative concepts online to see what works before investingin far more expensive television commercials or magazine ads.

Effective measurement of social media activities requires a new,expanded mindset as well as a means to integrate data gatheredfrom all types of media. In an interview with eMarketer, socialmedia guru at Nielsen Online Pete Blackshaw summed it up well:“On one side, you’ve got paid media and on the other you’ve gotearned media. Put consumer-generated media, social media anda lot of indirect marketing on the earned side, and paid media—offline and online—on the unearned side.The two kinds [can]synergize [with] one another because paid advertising can helpstimulate the conversation.What we need is a measurementmodel that can look at the two—both in distinct buckets, but alsoas an ecosystem where one is feeding the other. Brand equity isheavily impacted by the way in which the two interact.”

Mr. Blackshaw concluded, “Brands need to figure out models forlooking at all of this in totality. It would be the ultimate branddashboard that can look at ad measurements plus consumerperceptions through social media, and do it in real time.”

Just as standards are needed for measuring online advertisingprograms in general,many feel standards need to evolve for the socialworld,as explained by Ms.Tilds of Mindshare-Team Detroit:“There is alack of standards on the data-mining aspects of social media. It hasn’tevolved because everyone wants to make their standard acompetitive advantage,but that is the worst thing to do for theindustry.There should be a call for a standard and an open dialogue.”

Marketers are also excited about online video ads.Why? Becausethey can offer the sight, sound, motion and emotion of televisionads, and provide better potential targeting and measurability.Thedigital nature of online video ads also means they can instantly beshared with others. For brand marketers looking to engage withconsumers, online video ads provide a variety of metrics,including time spent.According to LiveRail, consumers watch, onaverage, more than 80% of a 30-second online video ad.

“With online video, there is time-based mediabuying where time is one component of themix.The advertiser is buying a person’sattention. I’ve seen very few standards onwhat time means.” —Cary Tilds, senior vicepresident, Mindshare-Team Detroit, in an interview witheMarketer, May 2009

When it comes to measurement of social media and video,advertisers are in the very early stages of connecting the dots.

Q&A:What are the measurement challenges withrespect to online video?

“There are a lot of different kinds of metrics being captured,analyzed and used to support the effectiveness of videocampaigns. I would hope that the industry starts to whittle downthe sheer number and decides that complete views are great, butmidpoint views don’t necessarily give you a lot of useful data.”Full Interview

“The instinctual reaction of advertisers to try and show the salesimpact of a video campaign is really misguided.We have studiesshowing that video, photo-sharing, weather and social mediaplacements look horrible in the online ROI equation because theyare upper-funnel. People don’t see ads on Facebook and then gobuy something. But we are doing engagement mapping which isthe ability to associate sales credit or ROI to all of the digitaltouchpoints in a person’s history.” Full Interview

Young-Bean SongSenior Director of Analytics & Atlas Institute

Microsoft Advertising,Microsoft Corp.’s digitalmarketing and media solutions provider

Joe LaszloDirector of Research

Interactive Advertising Bureau,trade association

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“Identifying scalable ways to track online video can be complicatedand there are special ways to track exposures.There’s also aproliferation of different formats and then there are proprietaryplayers. Did people turn the sound on, did they stop the ad, did theyrewind or repeat it and if so, how many times?” Full Interview

“There’s a lot of experimentation going on as to ad placement andformat—be it preroll or postroll. I’m not sure anybody has figuredit out or what counts as engagement with an online video ad.We’re running video ad tests looking at the impact on brandmetrics and impact on sales.” Full Interview

Unraveling Consumer Engagement MetricsAlthough few in the industry can agree on a common definition of“engagement” in the context of online advertising measurement,clearly the Internet offers unique opportunities here given itsinteractive nature.

Marketers, their agencies and a plethora of other industrystakeholders are working hard to develop engagement metricsthat can act as proxies for attitudinal or behavioral changes theywant to influence.

“We are in the process of trying to figure out the most effectiveway of attributing shifts in brand health to online activity,” said Ms.Fuller of MasterCard Worldwide, in an interview with eMarketer.“The easier part of the equation is measuring engagement.Thequestion is: How do you get more sophisticated about measuringthe quality and impact of brand engagement?”

Ms. Fuller added, “We look at time spent on our site and whetheror not people engaged with the games we have there, how much traffic we’re able to drive and viral/social activities we areable to generate.”

As Mr. Hecht of VivaKi said in an interview with eMarketer, “Whatwe need to do is focus more on the outcomes and outputs ofdigital media.We’re focused more on brand engagement metricsthat enable us to have better proxies for behavior and attitudes.”

Those in the research field have their own ideas about whatconstitutes engagement. Nielsen, for example, is a big believer intime spent as a measure of engagement and brand impact. Mr.Gibs of Nielsen put it this way: “The single biggest problem is thatthe current measurement methodologies are insufficient to dealwith the complexities of online advertising.The solution webelieve quite strongly in is that measures of advertising onlineshould be time-based measures, rather than impression-basedmeasures. Instead of buying 100 million impressions on a Website,it would be buying X% of a person’s time.”

Mr. Gibs went on to explain that time-based measures alignpublisher incentives with advertiser goals.When time spent is themetric advertisers are paying for,Web-based publishers will wantto create an engaging environment so visitors stick around andinteract with the advertising.

From the agency side, Cory Treffiletti of Catalyst:SF argues thattime is not only a key measurement online, but that marketersshould be adding up all the pockets of time spent with the brandas a kind of overall engagement metric.As he said in his June 3,2009, Online Spin column in MediaPost, “Time spent across theentire campaign is the only metric that truly covers all the bases.”

Others argue that time spent is insufficient.

“The key is to compare more than time spent, utilizing theinteractive nature of the engagement unit,” wrote Joe Marchese,also for Online Spin, in April 2009. “Marketers should look to tieengagements directly to changes in brand perception, purchaseintent and, in the end, purchase decisions.”

Mr.Wiener, CEO of 360i, likes the idea of a cost-per-engagementmetric, but he also advocates a restructuring of disciplines withinmarketing organizations and a concerted effort to stop conflatingdirect response and branding measurements.

“I believe that coming up with a cost-per-interaction or cost-per-engagement metric is an important component for a solution,”said Mr.Wiener. “There is no panacea. One of the challenges is thatpeople are looking for the Holy Grail.”

Ken MallonSenior Vice President–Custom Solutionsand Ad Effectiveness Consulting

Dynamic Logic, research companyspecializing in marketing effectiveness

Gian FulgoniChairman and Co-Founder

comScore Inc.,provider of online audiencemeasurement and survey research

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Q&A:What is the potential game-changer for onlinebrand measurement?

“We’re looking for deeper analytics and to tie them all the waythrough to retail. In five, maybe 10 years, consumers will receivecustom messages for specific retailers on their phone.They’llstore their preferences and the information will go right into theirloyalty card.They will choose where they want to shop and theoffers will follow them there.” Full Interview

“Media allocation modeling, which analyzes all the elements in acampaign that contributed to an action, sale or behavior and notsimply giving the last click all the credit. Marketers buying orplanning digital media on time-based measures rather thanimpression-based measures.” Full Interview

“I don’t think there’ll be a single game-changer. But I think themost important thing is that chief marketing officers need to giveclear mandates and reorganize internally and externally aroundmaking digital a priority as a brand-building medium.There needsto be a clear delineation between brand objectives and metricsand direct response objectives and metrics. I think everything elsefollows from that.”

“Marketers need to understand not only what worksretrospectively, but how they can use data proactively to makebetter decisions about the audiences they buy and the way theydeliver messages.When you have a programmatic way of usingthat sort of insight across a broad range of media, you begin tobreak down barriers.”

Next Steps: A Seven-Point Plan

This final section summarizes the next steps for

the industry in a short, seven-point action plan.

Once again, in keeping with the community

nature of this report, the reader is encouraged to

add comments and suggestions.

1. Reorganize and Restructure Your TeamsFirst, marketers need to restructure their organizations so thatonline marketing reports directly to the CMO.This is the only waythat attribution and cross-platform models will be successful.

Second, marketers and their ad agencies need to reorganize theirinternal teams and structures to concentrate on the brandingcomponent of the online measurement process as a separate anddistinct process from direct response measurement.

Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i, put it well: “Digital is too oftensynonymous with direct response. CMOs need to look at theirmarketing organizations and the way their agency roster isorganized. If they want digital to be an effective brand-buildingmedium, they need to reorganize their departments and havepeople who understand digital and agencies that understanddigital. Everything else follows from that.”

Added Mr.Wiener, “There needs to be a clear separation anddelineation between brand objectives/metrics and directresponse objectives/metrics. I think mixing the two, which we’veall been guilty of, has created more confusion.”

To quote author Jim Collins, you also need get the right people onthe bus. Specifically, you need two kinds of people: left-brainersand right-brainers.

Left-brainers manage the terabytes of data, build complex modelswith databases that talk to each other, and then channel that datainto actionable insights. Left-brainers are typically logical,sequential, rational, analytical and objective.They look at parts.

Right-brainers are the creative types who can craft advertisingthat strikes an emotional chord, changes attitudes and motivatespeople to buy. Right-brainers are random, intuitive, holistic,synthesizing and subjective.They look at wholes.

And finally, of course, you have to bring the left-brainers and right-brainers together.As John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, toldeMarketer, “There has to be a change in the way agencies arestructured. Media buying, media planning and creative have to bedone cross-platform.”

Mark AddicksSenior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer

General Mills,consumer packaged goods marketer

Jon GibsVice President–Media Analytics

The Nielsen Co.’s Nielsen Online,provider of online audience measurementand analysis

Bryan WienerChief Executive Officer

360i,digital marketing agency

Konrad FeldmanChief Executive Officer

Quantcast Corp.,online audience measurement service

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2. PartnerKey stakeholders, including ad agencies, research houses, portalsand Web analytics firms, should strive to establish deep, broadlyencompassing partnerships.The goal? To build up huge,multiplatform databases that sync up demographic data, audiencedata, attitudinal data, behavioral data and transactional data.

Focus on hybrid models that combine the best of panelmeasurement and brand intercept platforms.

3. Build Cross-Media CoalitionsThe major media trade associations, including the IAB,ARF, 4A’s,ANA, OPA and the WAA (Web Analytics Association) must step uptheir efforts to align goals and committee efforts to developcommon standards, definitions and best practices formeasurement.A common currency is also a must.

As such, the industry needs to develop standardized methods forapplying reach, frequency and GRPs to online platforms.(Importantly, the denominator in the GRP equation must be thetotal US population, or total target universe—not the population ofthe medium.)

The adoption of GRPs will be a starting point in providingmarketers with apples-to-apples measurements that they canplug into their media mix models.

Building on the GRP model as a foundation, the next step is tooverlay the data that is unique to the online space and provides adigital footprint measuring how the consumer is engaged with thebrand over a period of time.This could include time spent as wellas a host of other engagement metrics.The goal is to move frommedia ad buckets and data silos to true integration—measuringacross media.

4. Create Next-Generation Attribution ModelsPut a laserlike focus on building attribution models to identify andquantify the value of every media touchpoint along the purchasefunnel. Tie that data into holistic models that can help marketersmake future decisions about media allocations, both within theonline universe and across all media platforms.Among other skillsets, this will require a mastery of Web analytics.

Additionally, the models need to incorporate social media andvideo activity. Marketers must make it a priority to systematicallymonitor social media interactions and use this valuable“listening/learning” to inform their online and offline media andcreative messages. One of the biggest challenges will be tomeasure the sharing activity among social consumers, includingonline video ads and widgets, which can affect a marketer’s reachand engagement levels.Those who are able to connect all the dotswill enjoy a significant competitive advantage.

5. Become EducatedWhile models can provide insight, the models themselves need tobe shaped by insights that come from the real world—specifically,through market research that will tell you what online consumersare doing and what they are likely to do in the future. By armingyourself with information and trend data, you will be able to askthe right questions and design measurement systems and modelsthat capitalize on real consumer behavior and attitudes.

“Data is useless unless it becomes currencyfor making a decision.”—Rashid Tobaccowala, CEO, Denuo, as quoted inMediaPost, June 10, 2009

6.Take a Long-Term ViewRemember there is no silver bullet. Hard work and carefulplanning will be necessary to reinvent online brand measurementand coordinate it seamlessly with offline measurement.There areno shortcuts to success.

7. Make a CommitmentWherever you are in the online marketing ecosystem, make acommitment to improving online measurement for your brands,or those of your clients.While measurement is not the only thingthat needs fixing in the online advertising industry, it is a hugeobstacle to more ad dollars coming through the pipeline.

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Endnotes

Endnote numbers correspond to the unique

six-digit identifier in the lower left-hand corner

of each chart. The charts from the report are

repeated before their respective endnotes.

102197 | 104363 | 104366

102197104363104366

Extended Note: eMarketer benchmarks its US online advertisingspending projections against the Interactive Advertising Bureau(IAB)/PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data, for which the last fullyear measured was 2008. Online ad data includes categories asdefined by IAB/PwC benchmark—display ads (such as banners),search ads (including paid listings, contextual text links and paidinclusion), rich media, video (including in-stream, in-banner, in-text), classified ads, sponsorships, lead generation (referrals) ande-mail (embedded ads only); excludes mobile ad spending.

US Online Advertising Spending Growth, 2007-2013 (%change)

2007 25.6%

2008 10.6%

2009 4.5%

2010 9.4%

2011 10.8%

2012 13.5%

2013 10.4%

Source: eMarketer, April 2009

102197 www.eMarketer.com

US Online Advertising Spending, by Format andObjective, 2008- 2013 (millions)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Display ads $4,877 $4,655 $4,824 $5,034 $5,426 $5,543

Video $734 $1,054 $1,501 $2,109 $3,134 $4,092

Rich media $1,642 $1,691 $1,849 $2,079 $2,359 $2,641

Sponsorships $387 $319 $348 $386 $438 $484

Branding total $7,640 $7,718 $8,522 $9,608 $11,357 $12,760

Search $10,546 $11,956 $13,534 $14,969 $16,648 $18,340

Classifieds $3,174 $2,671 $2,412 $2,554 $2,831 $2,976

Lead generation $1,683 $1,764 $1,930 $2,138 $2,393 $2,604

E-mail $405 $392 $402 $431 $472 $521

Direct responsetotal

$15,808 $16,783 $18,278 $20,092 $22,343 $24,440

Grand total $23,448 $24,500 $26,800 $29,700 $33,700 $37,200

Note: numbers may not add up to total due to roundingSource: eMarketer, April 2009

104363 www.eMarketer.com

US Online Advertising Spending Growth, by Formatand Objective, 2008-2013 (% change)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Video 126.5% 43.5% 42.5% 40.5% 48.6% 30.6%

Rich media -0.8% 3.0% 9.4% 12.4% 13.5% 12.0%

Sponsorships -39.2% -17.7% 9.4% 10.8% 13.5% 10.4%

Display ads 9.4% -4.6% 3.6% 4.4% 7.8% 2.2%

Branding total 8.0% 1.0% 10.4% 12.7% 18.2% 12.4%

E-mail -4.5% -3.2% 2.6% 7.1% 9.6% 10.4%

Search 19.8% 13.4% 13.2% 10.6% 11.2% 10.2%

Lead generation 6.3% 4.8% 9.4% 10.8% 11.9% 8.8%

Classifieds -4.4% -15.9% -9.7% 5.9% 10.8% 5.1%

Direct response total 11.8% 6.2% 8.9% 9.9% 11.2% 9.4%

Grand total 10.6% 4.5% 9.4% 10.8% 13.5% 10.4%

Source: eMarketer, April 2009

104366 www.eMarketer.com

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Endnotes

104394

104394

Extended Note: Barclays includes auctions, display, leadgeneration/e-mail, search and other. BMO Capital includesclassifieds, display ads, e-mail, lead generation, rich media andvideo, search, slotting fees, sponsorships and other. Borrellincludes standard display ads such as banners and pop-ups,streaming audio/video, paid search and direct/e-mail. CitiInvestment Research includes banner ads, classifieds, digitalvideo, e-mail, lead generation, rich media, search andsponsorships. Collins Stewart includes banner ads, classifieds,e-mail, referrals/lead generation, rich media/video, search andsponsorships. eMarketer benchmarks its US online advertisingspending projections against the Interactive Advertising Bureau(IAB)/PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data, for which the last fullyear measured was 2008. eMarketer includes categories asdefined by IAB/PwC benchmark—classifieds, display ads (such asbanners), e-mail (embedded ads only), lead generation (referrals),rich media, search ads (including paid listings, contextual text linksand paid inclusion), sponsorships and video (including in-stream,in-banner, in-text)—and excludes mobile ad spending.JupiterResearch includes classifieds, display and search. Myersincludes display, online video/social networks/widgets, searchand other.ThinkPanmure includes banner ads, classified ads,e-mail (embedded ads only), lead generation, rich media, search(paid and contextual), sponsorships and video. ZenithOptimediaalso includes Internet radio and podcasting.

104597 | 104600

104597104600

Extended Note: eMarketer benchmarks its US online advertisingspending projections against the Interactive Advertising Bureau(IAB)/PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data, for which the last fullyear measured was 2008.

1.0%

0.1%

-0.5%

-2.0%

-5.0%

4.5%

4.3%

3.0%

2.3%

2.1%

1.5%

Comparative Estimates: US Online AdvertisingSpending Growth, 2009 (% change*)

19.4%

14.8%

13.0%

10.0%

7.4%

7.2%

6.2%

5.0%

5.0%

LiveRail, September 2008

JupiterResearch, December 2008

BMO Capital Markets, October 2008

Wachovia, October 2008

ZenithOptimedia, April 2009

Borrell Associates Inc., November 2008

SNL Kagan, May 2009

Collins Stewart LLC, May 2009

GroupM, March 2009

eMarketer, April 2009

Citi Investment Research, January 2009

ThinkPanmure LLC, October 2008

Barclays Capital, May 2009

Morgan Stanley, March 2009

Thomas Weisel Partners, March 2009

Jefferies & Company, February 2009

Credit Suisse, February 2009

Myers Publishing LLC, May 2009

Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., February 2009

UBS, February 2009

Cowen and Co., May 2009

-6.0%

Note: *vs. prior yearSource: eMarketer, April 2009; various, as noted, 2008 & 2009

104394 www.eMarketer.com

US Online Display and Search Advertising SpendingGrowth, 2008-2013 (% change)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Search* 19.8% 13.4% 13.2% 10.6% 11.2% 10.2%

Display ads** 9.4% -4.6% 3.6% 4.4% 7.8% 2.2%

Note: *paid listings, contextual text links and paid inclusion; **banner adsonly, excludes rich media and videoSource: eMarketer, April 2009

104597 www.eMarketer.com

US Online Display and Search Advertising SpendingShare, 2008-2013 (% of total)

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Search* 45.0% 48.8% 50.5% 50.4% 49.4% 49.3%

Display ads** 20.8% 19.0% 18.0% 17.0% 16.1% 14.9%

Note: *paid listings, contextual text links and paid inclusion; **banner adsonly, excludes rich media and videoSource: eMarketer, April 2009

104600 www.eMarketer.com

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Endnotes

104573

104573

Citation: Barclays Capital, "Internet Data Book May 2009,"provided to eMarketer, May 14, 2009; BMO Capital Markets,"Internet Media & Broadcasting," provided to eMarketer, October30, 2008; Citi Investment Research, "US Advertising: Batten Downthe Hatches," provided to eMarketer, November 10, 2008; CollinsStewart LLC, "Global Internet," November 24, 2008; Cowen andCompany, "Internet & New Media," provided to eMarketer, May 22,2009; Credit Suisse, "US Advertising Outlook 2009," provided toeMarketer, January 9, 2009; Forrester Research, "US InteractiveAdvertising Forecast" as cited by Inside the Marketers Studio,April23, 2009 with eMarketer calculations; JPMorgan and companyreports, "Online Advertising Forecast," provided to eMarketer,November 3, 2008; JPMorgan and company reports, "Nothing ButNet," January 5, 2009; Myers Publishing LLC, "Advertising &Marketing Investment Forecast 2008-2010," May 4, 2009;Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., "Media & Internet," provided toeMarketer, February 24, 2009; SNL Kagan, "Economics of InternetMedia," provided to eMarketer, May 21, 2009;ThinkPanmure LLC,"Internet Advertising," October 8, 2008 provided to eMarketer,October 22, 2008; ZenithOptimedia, "Advertising ExpenditureForecasts - March 2009," provided to eMarketer,April 14, 2009

Extended Note: Barclays includes display, rich media and video.BMO Capital, Citi Investment, Collins Stewart, eMarketer,Oppenheimer and ZenithOptimedia include banners only. CreditSuisse includes banners, rich media and video. JPMorgan includesdisplay. Myers includes banners, rich media and other.ThinkPanmure includes display, rich media, listings and other.eMarketer benchmarks its US online advertising spending

projections against the Interactive Advertising Bureau(IAB)/PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data, for which the last fullyear measured was 2008. In its search figures, eMarketer includespaid listings (paid search), contextual text links and paid inclusion.

103522

103522

Extended Note: This chart shows the % impacted as a result ofexposure to the online ad campaign. For example, on average,2.4% of people (or 24 out of 1,000) exposed to online ads becomeaware of the tested brand.

103523

103523

Extended Note: Read chart as saying that on average, onlinecampaigns in the top 20% of performers impact 7.1% of peoplewith respect to purchase intent.

Comparative Estimates: US Online Display and SearchAdvertising Spending Growth, 2009 (% change*)

Online display

Search

Barclays Capital, May 2009 -1.0% 10.0%

BMO Capital Markets, October 2008 -2.0% 21.0%

Citi Investment Research, November 2008 -5.0% 14.0%

Collins Stewart, November 2008 3.0% 13.0%

Cowen and Company, May 2009 - 1.0%

Credit Suisse, January 2009 -5.9% 8.1%

eMarketer, April 2009 -4.6% 13.4%

Forrester Research, April 2009 1.7% 13.9%

JPMorgan, January 2009 6.3% 9.9%

Myers Publishing LLC, May 2009 -3.0% 1.0%

Oppenheimer & Co., February 2009 -15.0% 10.0%

SNL Kagan, May 2009 4.6% 9.1%

ThinkPanmure, October 2008 -5.0% 13.0%

ZenithOptimedia, April 2009 -1.8% 9.0%

Note: *vs. prior yearSource: eMarketer, April 2009; various, as noted, 2008 & 2009

104573 www.eMarketer.com

Online Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics in theUS, Q4 2008* (% of respondents impacted)

Aided brand

awareness

Online ad awareness

Message association

Brand favorability

Purchase intent

Control 72% 25% 17% 42% 39%

Exposed 74% 30% 19% 44% 40%

Delta** 2.4 4.9 2.6 1.6 1.3

Note: n=2,380 campaigns and 3,889,602 respondents; *includes threeyears through Q4 2008; **delta defined as point difference in exposed vs.control groupsSource: Dynamic Logic provided to eMarketer, April 27, 2009

103522 www.eMarketer.com

Online Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics in theUS, by Level of Campaign Performance*, Q4 2008** (%of respondents impacted)

Top

Average

Bottom

Online ad awareness

14.0%

4.9%

-1.6%

8.9%

2.4%

-2.3%

Aided brand

awareness

Message association

9.5%

2.6%

-2.0%

Brand favorability

7.5%

1.6%

-3.5%

Purchase intent

7.1%

1.3%

-4.0%

Note: n=2,380 campaigns and 3,889,602 respondents; *best performersare the average of the top 20% of campaigns per metric and worstperformers are the bottom 20% of campaigns; **includes three yearsthrough Q4 2008Source: Dynamic Logic provided to eMarketer, April 27, 2009

103523 www.eMarketer.com

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Endnotes

102827

102827

Extended Note: Branded content sites–respondents withcampaigns running for the past three years through Q3 2008.MarketNorms® database–respondents with campaigns runningfor the past three years through Q2 2008.

Related Information and Links

360ihttp://www.360i.com/

Aberdeen Grouphttp://www.aberdeen.com/

Acxiomhttp://www.acxiom.com

AdMedia Partnershttp://www.admediapartners.com/

AdRelevancehttp://www.adrelevance.com

Advertising Agehttp://adage.com

Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)http://www.thearf.org/

Adweekhttp://www.adweek.com

Alterianhttp://www.alterian.com/

American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s)http://www.aaaa.org

Association of National Advertisers (ANA)http://www.ana.net/

Atlas Institutehttp://www.atlassolutions.com/

BMO Capital Marketshttp://www.bmocm.com

Catalyst:SFhttp://www.catalystsf.com

CMO Councilhttp://www.cmocouncil.org/

Competehttp://www.compete.com

comScorehttp://www.comscore.com/

Cowen and Co.http://www.cowen.com

Credit Suissehttp://www.credit-suisse.com

Interactive* Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics inthe US, by Site Category, January 2009 vs. August 2008(% change in delta**)

Branded content sites(OPA members)

MarketNorms® database

Portals

Ad networks

Aidedbrand

aware-ness

63%

-11%

-9%

-21%

Onlinead

aware-ness

7%

-8%

-3%

-7%

Message assoc-iation

8%

-10%

-6%

0%

Brand favor-ability

40%

-18%

-11%

-18%

Purchaseintent

0%

-13%

0%

-40%

Note: *involves the audience without having them click through or leavethe Webpage; **delta defined as point difference in exposed vs. controlgroupsSource: Online Publishers Association (OPA) and Dynamic Logic, "ImprovingAd Performance Online: The Impact of Advertising on Quality ContentSites," January 8, 2009

102827 www.eMarketer.com

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 53

Related Information and Links

Crossix Solutionshttp://www.crossix.com

Datran Mediahttp://www.datranmedia.com

DoubleClickhttp://www.doubleclick.com

dunnhumbyhttp://www.dunnhumby.com

Dynamic Logichttp://www.dynamiclogic.com/na/

Eyeblasterhttp://www.eyeblaster.com

Forbeshttp://www.forbes.com/

Forrester Researchhttp://www.forrester.com

General Millshttp://www.generalmills.com/corporate/index.aspx

Heidrick & Struggleshttp://www.heidrick.com

Hewlett-Packardhttp://www.hp.com

ICON Internationalhttp://www.icon-intl.com

iMedia Connectionhttp://www.imediaconnection.com

InsightExpresshttp://www.insightexpress.com/

Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)http://www.iab.net/

iProspecthttp://www.iprospect.com

IXIhttp://www.ixicorp.com

Jefferies & Co.http://www.jefferies.com/

Johnson & Johnsonhttp://www.jnj.com

Kantar Grouphttp://www.kantargroup.com

Lenskold Group http://www.lenskold.com/

LiveRailhttp://www.liverail.com

Lotame Solutionshttp://www.lotame.com

Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG)http://www.mengonline.com

MarketingProfshttp://www.marketingprofs.com/

MarketingSherpahttp://www.marketingsherpa.com/

MarketSpherehttp://www.marketsphere.com/

MasterCard Worldwidehttp://www.mastercard.com/us/gateway.html

McKinsey & Co.http://www.mckinsey.com/

Media Link LLChttp://medialinkllc.com/

MediaPosthttp://www.mediapost.com

Mediasmithhttp://www.mediasmith.com/

Microsoft Advertisinghttp://advertising.microsoft.com

Millward Brownhttp://www.millwardbrown.com

MindSet Marketing Solutionshttp://www.mindsetmarketing.com

Mindshare-Team Detroithttps://www.teamdetroit.com/

Myers Publishinghttp://www.jackmyers.com

MySpacehttp://www.myspace.com

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Related Information and Links

Neo@Ogilvyhttp://www.neoogilvy.com/home/

NextActionhttp://www.nextaction.net

Nielsen Homescanhttp://www.homescan.com

Nielsen Onlinehttp://www.nielsen-online.com/

OfficeMaxhttp://www.officemax.com/

Omniturehttp://www.omniture.com

Online Publishers Association (OPA)http://www.online-publishers.org/

Oppenheimer & Co.http://www.opco.com

Organichttp://www.organic.com

Penn, Schoen & Berland Associateshttp://www.psbresearch.com

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)http://www.pwc.com

Primary Impacthttp://www.primaryimpact.com

Procter & Gamblehttp://www.pg.com

PROMO magazinehttp://promomagazine.com/

PubMatichttp://www.pubmatic.com/

Quantcasthttp://www.quantcast.com/

Razorfishhttp://www.razorfish.com/

Rubicon Projecthttp://www.rubiconproject.com/

Sapienthttp://www.sapient.com/

Specific Mediahttp://www.specificmedia.com

Spencer Stuarthttp://www.spencerstuart.com

Starcom MediaVest Grouphttp://www.smvgroup.com

The New York Times Co.http://www.nytco.com/

The Nielsen Co.http://www.nielsen.com

TNS Media Intelligencehttp://www.tns-mi.com

Universal McCannhttp://www.universalmccann.com

Upstream Grouphttp://www.upstreamgroup.com

Verse Grouphttp://www.versegroup.com/

VivaKi Nerve Centerhttp://www.vivaki.com/

Web Analytics Association (WAA)http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org

WPP Grouphttp://www.wpp.com

Yahoo!http://www.yahoo.com

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Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 55

Related Information and Links

ContacteMarketer, Inc. Toll-Free: 800-405-084475 Broad Street Outside the US: 212-763-601032nd floor Fax: 212-763-6020New York, NY 10004 [email protected]

Report ContributorsSpecial thanks to eMarketer colleagues who contributedto this report:

David Hallerman Senior AnalystTobi Elkin WriterEvelyn Majewski Senior ResearcherPatrick Miller Web DesignerDana Hill Production ArtistSusan Reiter Managing EditorKris Oser Communications DirectorYael Marmon Research DirectorNicole Perrin Copy EditorElissa Hunter Copy EditorAllison Smith Senior EditorTracy Tang Senior ResearcherTony Feyer Motion GraphicsJared Jenks Numbers EditorJames Ku Data Entry Associate

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