I-COM worldmeasurementnews

comScore and Starcom USA Release Updated “Natural Born Clickers” Study Showing 50 Percent Drop in Number of U.S. Internet Users Who Click on Display Ads

RESTON, VA, October 1, 2009 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world today released the results of an update to its highly publicized “Natural Born Clickers” research, originally conducted two years ago in conjunction with media agency Starcom USA and Tacoda. The collaborative studies focus on an understanding of how U.S. Internet users click on display ads. The updated results based on March 2009 comScore data indicated that the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32 percent of Internet users in July 2007 to only 16 percent in March 2009, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8 percent of the Internet user base) accounting for the vast majority (85 percent) of all clicks.

“The act of clicking on a display ad is experiencing rapid attrition in the current digital marketplace,” said Linda Anderson, comScore VP of marketing solutions and author of the study. “Today, marketers who attempt to optimize their advertising campaigns solely around the click are assigning no value to the 84 percent of Internet users who don’t click on an ad. That’s precisely the wrong thing to do, because other comScore research has shown that non-clicked ads can also have a significant impact. As a result, savvy marketers are moving to an evaluation of the impact that all ad impressions – whether clicked or not – have on consumer behavior, mirroring the manner in which traditional advertising has been measured for decades using reach and frequency metrics.” More...

The Nielsen Company and Facebook Form Strategic Alliance

Industry Leaders to Use Nielsen Products to Help Marketers Better Measure Online Advertising Impact and Realize Greater ROI

New York, NY and Palo Alto, CA – September 22, 2009 – The Nielsen Company and Facebook today announced a multi-year, strategic alliance to help marketers better use the Internet to develop and market new products. The alliance combines Facebook’s global consumer reach with Nielsen’s market research expertise to provide better insight and information to marketers around the world.

The first product of the collaboration, Nielsen BrandLift, is designed to provide marketers with effectiveness measurement for Facebook advertising. It will launch in the U.S. with select test partners this week and roll out to all Facebook advertisers in the coming months. BrandLift uses opt-in polls on Facebook’s homepage to measure consumer attitudes and purchase intent from display advertising that has appeared on the site.

“Facebook is an increasingly vital link between consumers and brands,” said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen’s online division. “We will now be able to add deep knowledge of this important social network to our unmatched media measurement and consumer insight across all three screens. Together we will be able to provide the missing elements to clients seeking better understanding of how Web content and online advertising affect consumer behavior.”

“Nielsen is the leader in measurement and is an excellent partner for us as we look to provide marketers with richer ad effectiveness data,” said Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. “The combination of our unique ability to quickly and effectively poll a sample of our more than 300 million users and Nielsen’s expertise in data analysis will give marketers access to powerful data they can use to understand and improve current and future campaigns.” More...

My Brand's Bigger Than Your Brand

Pat LaPointe writes for Mediapost: Like moths to a flame, marketers are attracted to published rankings of brand value to see how their brand compares to those of key competitors, and how much it went up or down year-on-year. These rankings cater to both the basic human instinct of the need for comparability and to marketers' desire to "prove" that their investments are creating tangible shareholder value. More...

The challenge in cross-channel campaign integration

Mick O'Brien, VP Operations APAC at Eyeblaster writes for iMedia: Marketers may be keen on cross-channel campaigns, but a recent Eyeblaster study shows many don't know how to bridge the chasm between implementing these campaigns and measuring their effectiveness.

Online ad campaigns have become integral in the minds of marketers worldwide. An indication of the increasing importance of online into the marketing mix was the response by 63 percent of marketers who credited interactive display rich media as a primary driver for both brand building and audience response in a recent survey that polled 400 senior marketing executives across the globe (including APAC). More...

Online Brand Measurement: Connecting the Dots

Geoffrey Ramsey, CEO and Co-Founder of eMarketer writes: Measurement means different things to different people—but most can agree that in business, measurement is vital to long-term success. Could the online advertising industry benefit from a similar transformation if better brand measurement systems were put in place? Does the industry have the right metrics to be able to connect the dots—both within online platforms and between online and offline media? That’s what this report [Online Brand Measurement: Connecting the Dots] was designed to uncover. More...

Omniture and Kantar Group Partner to Provide Integrated Measurement and Management of Marketing across All Media Platforms - From Online to Offline

OREM, Utah - and NEW YORK - Omniture, Inc. (NASDAQ: OMTR), a leading provider of online business optimization software, and WPP's Kantar Group, one of the world's largest research, insight and consultancy networks, today announced a partner relationship that will bring together business critical online analytics and strategic research intelligence under a single marketing platform for integrated reporting and management. Through this ongoing partner relationship, clients can gain a more holistic view of how their online and offline initiatives and branding efforts affect one another. The platform is designed to yield insights that advertisers, agencies and media organizations can use to execute more relevant, personalized marketing campaigns, quickly innovate, and successfully bring to market the products and services their customers want.

Omniture will integrate several Kantar offerings including: online advertising effectiveness and brand measurement from Dynamic Logic; competitive intelligence, audience demographics and behavioral profiling from TNS Media Compete; and attitudinal and lifestyle insights from Kantar's consumer panels, the world's largest online/offline panel collective. These new offers will be delivered to clients through Omniture Genesis, a solution that integrates complementary third-party applications and data with the Omniture Online Marketing SuiteTM. More...

Are We Shortchanging Ourselves In Ad Effectiveness Studies?

Chen Wang writes for Mediapost: When it comes down to measuring brand impact from a digital display campaign, there probably is no better tool than a survey-based ad effectiveness study. Dynamic Logic, Insight Express, comScore, Nielsen are the names of a few that have had extensive experience in carrying out such task...This seemingly foolproof design has one often-neglected flaw that may leave the reported overall ad effectiveness lift numbers inaccurate. The problem originates from a combination of the following two areas: the way the subjects are recruited/surveyed and the way the brand metric lift numbers are subsequently tabulated. More...

Rich Media Research Roundup

Tessa Wegert writes for The ClickZ Network: Last month DoubleClick released its "Creative Insights on Rich Media" report, which analyzes ad-serving data to produce an overview of the changing rich media landscape. The report provides practical, proven advice for producing better ads that result in improved click-through and interaction rates. Among the recommendations: incorporating video into ad units. In-page video units were found to generate higher click-through and interaction rates than in-page non-video ads and expanding formats. Additionally, integrating a video component into expanding units was found to produce a higher interaction rate than non-video expanding units overall. More...

Van den Ende & Deitmers takes Stake in MetrixLab

Amsterdam, October 20th, 2008. Van den Ende & Deitmers takes a 30% stake in MetrixLab, Europe’s second largest online market research agency. MetrixLab provides market research services in 39 countries to 41 of the world’s leading brands such as Microsoft, Philips, Canon, Google, Unilever, Sara Lee and PepsiCo.

MetrixLab was founded in 1999 by Han de Groot, who has built the company together with co-shareholders Jan Willem Gerritsen, Maikel Willems and Thijs Elias to become one of Europe’s leading providers of online market research services with offices in the Netherlands, UK, Germany, France and Spain. More...

Social Media - Maybe I Just Don’t ‘Get It’

Pat LaPointe writes for Mediapost: Social media has attributes that are truly unique in the evolution of marketing. It has revolutionary potential. And it needs lots more development to mature. But we marketers don't do ourselves any favors by trying to disconnect it from financial value just because it's hard to make the links. More...