Testing and Tracking Ads Goes Mainstream
By Anna Johnson on June 2nd, 2009You know things are changing when a publication such as The New York Times reports that the big ad agencies are all madly setting up data analysis departments. Yep, traditional ad agencies are finally getting it: testing and tracking ads is here to stay.
Direct response marketers have always ‘lived and died’ by the numbers. They were the first to see the online advertising environment for what it was: the most measurable marketing medium in history. As such, they not only applied all the skills and tools already at their disposal – honed in the off-line world – but quickly developed new skills and tools to test, track, tweak and improve their online campaign results.
Now – and especially in these recessionary times – the traditional ad agencies are realizing that they can no longer ‘wow’ their clients with sheer creativity. On the Internet, clients have just one response: show me the money.
Traditional ad agencies have long been able to put up an ad campaign on television or radio with no direct accountability for results. Sure, clients have tracked sales during campaigns… clients and agencies have used ‘advertisement recall’ surveys to assess how memorable their ads were… and other, similar, research has been performed.
But now you don’t have to survey a sample of people about whether or not they remember your ad. You can check your own records to see how many people clicked on, interacted with, and took action as a result of seeing your online text or display ad.
While recent research (published in Kikabink News) indicates that seeing display ads also has some kind of impact, no client or agency in their right mind could ignore the hard numbers with regard to impressions, clicks, actions and conversions.
And with the expense of testing and tracking – including changing creative executions – cheaper online than in any other medium, there are fewer excuses for persisting with ads that don’t work.
So, it seems, the big Madison Avenue agencies are rushing to hire analytical folks to complement the creatives in an effort to come up with more effective online ad campaigns.
If my experience as an ex-traditional ad agency copywriter, and in recently working with a major company used to running marketing the ‘old’ (non-measurable) way is any indication, the big agencies will have some way to go before they’re as sophisticated as some of their direct response brethren.
But with big client accounts at stake (and the ability to buy the expertise if necessary) they’ll catch up.
Source: Stephanie Clifford, “Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise,” The New York Times, May 30, 2009
