Internet Media Campaigns: Analysis Paralysis

by Uma Sivakumar, head, online media, Tribal DDB India

Too much analysis leads to paralysis, or lack of action. This has great relevance to internet media campaigns of today. It’s very often that internet campaigns get stymied at their infancy because of over measurement. Brands tend to over expect from internet campaigns since the results are transparent for everyone to see.

One cannot ignore the euphoria in the interactive space in India. The latest Zenith Optimedia’s 'Ad Expenditure Forecast' is out and internet spends this year are expected to double from last year and grow almost ten times in the next two years. The contribution of the internet, they say is likely to grow to 6.5 per cent of total media spends from close to 2 per cent today. Online businesses have been mushrooming in the anticipation that this euphoria will translate into advertising or e-commerce business. Social networking, online matrimonials, classifieds, jobs, property and travel websites are seeing phenomenal opportunities for growth.

But the moot question is: are brands sharing the same euphoria about advertising online? Well, the answer is both yes and no. Yes, because brands that have sampled the net in the last few years are seeing promise in the medium and are willing to put their money in. While, some of the more traditional brands are still sitting on the fence wondering if they should jump on the bandwagon.

The question plaguing their minds is: Does internet have a critical mass yet for a brand to warrant serious consideration in the overall media mix? What does not help is that internet campaigns suffer from the measurement panic. Brands tend to over measure internet campaigns too quickly and jump to conclusions like “We have used the internet and it didn’t work”.

We have often heard some brands say “My offline campaign has been doing badly; can your internet do the magic for me”? Or “My TV and Print campaigns are driving enough traffic to my website right now and I don’t need to do an internet campaign.” Or “My dealers and the trade want us to be present on Television ….”

Is such a comparison of media the right way to look at it? Can one actually compare the deliveries of one medium and pitch it against the other? Don’t all the mediums play a unique role in a consumer’s mind and hence trigger desired responses in a slightly different fashion?

Are there any unique advantages that internet as a medium brings to the table that brands might find useful? There are plenty really. For starters,

•Internet is an individual’s medium. Your advertising reaches an individual rather than a family or a group of people.
•It allows a brand to reach different individuals with varied contextually relevant messages at exactly the same time.
•Creatively, it’s a flexible medium and allows a brand to experiment with text only, graphic banners, rich media banners and also video and streaming versions.
•It doesn’t cost an arm or leg to experiment with creatives on the internet.
•Real time tracking and optimization come in very handy, it’s easy to pull off a poorly performing creative.
•Database collection online and acting on the data collected in online campaigns is easy.
•Unique tracking codes help clients identify specific impact each creative has had on its audience, critical paths that people who clicked the banner followed on their website, profiles of people who responded to the campaign, details of which user went on to buy..

So what are the issues facing us in the internet advertising business?

Many a times clients throw reach and frequency requirements at us and we are at a loss at how to fulfil them using the internet. Print has ABC and NRS/IRS, Television has Intam/TAM. These monitoring tools help planners justify their plans to clients. We in India lack its equivalent in the online space. Most online planners rely on either their own experiential data to plan internet campaigns and quickly resort to aggressive monitoring and campaign management to make good any lapses in planning.

Some brands who have invested in the online medium for a while have been able to develop working funnels for themselves and hence know exactly what to expect from their net campaigns.

We need a unified and accepted measurement and metrics regime. The industry needs to get a fix on ratings/reporting and have researchers like NRS, IRS and TAM so that advertisers start using the medium like they use any other medium. It is time for the industry to arrive at a uniform metric standard.

Internet publishers and online agencies should unite and form an industry body that helps us monitor internet usage patterns on a real-time basis. This will close the loop and help internet media planners bring science into their media plans. Brands need to be educated on how to use the net effectively. Cost per lead buys is not always the most effective way to buy internet media.

The key lies in using the internet for the benefits it provides rather than use common comparison parameters across all media. I would like to leave brands with a few unique uses of the net for delivering substantial value.

Use the net:
•As a research tool to check out effectiveness of various creative routes
•To cement a relationship that may have started offline through online brand engagement
•To target specific communities - NRI’s, Investors, Teenagers, Bike and Car Lovers…
•To build and develop online communities which continue to participate on your website long after your offline and online campaigns have ceased.

My final submission is that, we, internet media planners should stop apologetically comparing internet media with other media on terms that are biased to us.