effectiveness & ROI

Editor’s Note: This piece has attracted more “Recommendations” than any MediaPost article in memory. Why Most Agencies Stay Away from ROI Metrics – via MediaPost (Michael Li, contributing editor)

• Posted: July 26, 2016

In many of the RFPs and proposals submitted by agencies to these clients, the focus is still primarily on items such as impressions, clicks or “engagement” metrics.

If sales are the key metric that CEO/CMOs care about, the campaign focus should be on solid conversions where a direct action is taken on a webpage such as a user making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.

With a focus on influencing the “right” audience, building brand awareness or being “top of mind” in the eyes of the consumer, many agencies skirt around providing clients with more concrete quantitative-driven results. They peddle the belief that a “deeply affected” and ‘influenced’ audience will be more likely to make a purchase later by simply getting the brand in front of them.

The honest answer is that achieving true conversion metrics is difficult. It is much harder to achieve conversion goals, and much harder to explain.

Access full article from MediaPost

Original Research — -“Yes, Advertising Works” – CBS, Meredith, Nielsen Catalina, Yahoo, Sequent Partners

• Posted: June 3, 2016

Advertisers want to invest their media dollars where they will drive the highest returns. Over the past ten years, Nielsen Catalina Solutions has delivered over 2,200 consumer package goods Sales Effect studies. The goal of this research is to determine the incremental in-store sales lifts driven by advertising, as well as to understand the key drivers of the campaign so that the advertising can be improved over time.

Among the issues that will be discussed are:

• Can you create a true “average” for the ROAS (return on advertising spend) or should we only provide guidance?
• How do we make choices as to “what’s in or out” in order to have a fair comparison?

For more information visit Audience Measurement.

One Marketing Metric to Rule Them All? Group Believes It Has One.  Lengthy Test Across 100 Brands is a Step Toward Linking Marketing to Cash Flow

• Posted: December 7, 2015

The Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) has developed a method to measure brand value and predict movements in market share.  Jack Neff, writing for Advertising Age, analyzes this “Brand Choice” metric.

MASB was established seven years ago by a coalition of academics, market researchers, and marketers. It recently concluded Phase I of its Brand Investment & Validation project.  MASB tested a “Brand Choice” metric based on surveys of approximately 500 people per brand. These consumers were asked to select among several competing brands in a category as if they were winners of a prize drawing.

According to David Stewart, Marketing Professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and MASB chair, “We believe by linking this Brand Choice metric to some pretty simple metrics like market share, price premium and distribution coverage, we can actually generate estimates of future operating cash flow, which allows you to get at the value of a brand.”

He also pointed out that this is the first time the Brand Choice Metric has been studied across such a broad array of brands in consumer packaged goods and automotive.

Phase II of the project involves comparing how the MASB’s metric compares to other brand valuation and evaluation models.  MASB will also study what factors reliably drive its Brand Choice metric – including marketing spending, advertising quality, and social media. Study parameters are still in development, and will likely take 18 months to test.  As a result, Mr. Stewart doesn’t expect results until 2018.

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