‘Quality of feedback is the key’

There is a lot of confusion over the measurement of response to online advertising. Is there any standard way of measuring response?

Measurement of response is a very broad term. To ensure success of any online campaign the following parameters need to be considered:

• First of all, we need to have authentic third party research on site usership. There are a few existing options today, but the research can definitely be improved.
  
• Measurement of  effectiveness of a campaign also largely depends on the objectives  set for the campaign.
• A launch campaign looks at generating a high reach to help generate awareness, and the measurement here could be as simple as the number of people who have seen the communication and have been able to recollect it.
• Other campaigns could have 'generating response' as an objective and here we need to measure the number of people who have seen the campaign and interacted with it. This is done by measuring clicks or leads.
• Some other campaigns would go beyond the lead to measure sales that the campaign was able to generate.

Thus ultimately, the extent of measurement would be dependent on the objectives set in the beginning of the campaign. But caution needs to exercised while setting these objectives as sometimes an overemphasis on a certain objective or the measurement of too many objectives tends to weaken the campaign in execution. 

The quality of information feedback to the planners is the key to ensure that online campaigns continue to be effective. And we find that clients who have combed the entire process from lead generation to conversions have been able to leverage the medium to the fullest. 

Do we have enough qualified people to meet the demands of the online advertising industry?
This industry is fairly nascent and has been growing at a very healthy pace, so getting qualified staff is a challenge across the board.  I feel that training the next generation of online professionals will be the key to growth in this industry.  The agencies, publishers and clients should actively get together to help enlarge this pool of talent rather than poach from each other. 

Are clients who advertise online looking for an elite audience, since the Internet is available to only those who are computer literate?
Presently the clientele is limited to the educated urban middle class, but not necessarily the elite. You will find that the older elite are not online too much. It is the younger generation and the working community that you find using the Net for all kinds of purposes.

It has become almost a must for companies to have their own websites, with each trying to be innovative. Is this also a part of advertising?
Yes. The website is the primary advertising medium. Clients use URLs everywhere to get people onto their website. You see URLs on something as small as cigarette packs to large spaces like hoardings these days.

A television commercial interacts with a user for 20 seconds but if a client is able to push users to go on to his website the interaction with his brand could go up to at least a few minutes, and that's obviously desirable for brands.

How do you decide which site is the best for your client?
We have executed campaigns across various product categories on about 125 sites. For every campaign executed by us we develop extensive databanks. We develop conversion funnels and establish benchmarks. We then work towards bettering those benchmarks.  While we work extensively with performance data for our campaigns, we also constantly look for newer opportunities using existing research like Comscore or Vizisense. Most of our campaign have budgets allocated for trying out new sites/networks, ad positions or ad sizes.   

Has recession affected online advertising too?
Yes,  It definitely has. In the last two quarters we have found that clients have been prudent with spends, some of the campaigns have been withdrawn or pushed. We find that this trend is now changing for the better; a few of our clients have invited us to participate in their digital planning exercises for the next year. 

We are hopeful that in the year 2009-2010 a larger share of the advertising pie may go the digital way, as digital advertising is far more measurable and hence more accountable. 

Would you say that the Internet is the cheapest form of advertising as of today?
That's difficult to generalise. Certainly the internet is the sharpest medium to reach the educated urban youth and Indians living abroad. However one cannot compare the results of any two media as they are very different. 

Which is your favourite online advertisement created by your agency?
We do interesting work for most of our clients. Our work often features in domestic and international awards. We do result-based campaigns for our clients, like Times Business Solutions and Citibank.

We have also helped launch a few brands in India.