New Web Marketers Optimize with Qualitative Data

In January of 2008 market research and analytics firm Yankee Group predicted the U.S. online advertising market will reach $50.3 billion in revenue by 2011, more than doubling that yielded in 2007.

In this study’s corresponding report, The Cowboys Dance On…and On: 2007 Yankee Group offers their take on what predominant factors are driving this growth; increased online audiences, development of new types of advertising, along with the creation of new publisher business models that help sell interactive advertising.

These factors seem almost organic and implied, just as Yankee Group’s senior analyst Daniel Taylor points out; “with internet connectivity nearly ubiquitous, online advertising growth is inevitable.”

The key point that Taylor hits on is that, “this growth in online advertising will require publishers to invest extensively in new media and advertising product development.”

Blogger, and marketing theorist, Robin Good describes growth in online media, as “highly effective, interactive, just-in-time, informal and entertaining formats,”.

Marketers are responding to this new media environment, blogs and social media in particular, by developing new interactive advertising strategies.

The new web is all about interaction; communicating and discussing opinions, and social networking. Marketers are, therefore, finding the best way to enter new web interactions, or conversations, and leverage this position to generate qualitative consumer behavior data, based on user engagement.

New publisher business models that support new types of interactive advertising, succeed in efficiently generating engagement-based qualitative data. Marketers, however, are still learning how to best monitor, analyze, and optimize with, this new means of measuring and targeting online audiences.

Engagement vs. Action.

Marketers are clearly recognizing the value, and potential, of access to engagement-based data, but this doesn’t mean the age-old CPC will fall by the wayside. I contend that traditional online media strategies, relying on measurement metrics including impressions, clicks, and cost per actions, will, continue to be a valuable asset in online marketing objectives, and be used by marketers as a familiar and effective means of measuring online consumer action.

Why?

Because traditional quantitative metrics are proven to be accurate, highly measurable, and serve as a currency for online marketing campaign pricing models. The new web’s offering of qualitative, engagement, data will serve to compliment, not phase out, traditional metrics, by adding to the effectiveness of campaign optimization.

To stay ahead in the game, online marketers, therefore, must embrace, and implement conversational brand marketing strategies, and the engagement data which is generated, into their current, qualitative metric based campaign objectives.

The ability to enter new web conversations and listen to why a consumer prefers one brand over another is valuable. Think of it as the difference between watching a child on the playground choose the monkey bars over the slide, as opposed to the child telling you why he/she prefers the monkey bars.

How is this achieved?

Once an abstract practice, the idea of monitoring blog conversation is now becoming standard in online marketing strategies.
As Brian Mathena, group director at Carat Los Angeles explains about social media site MySpace; “instead of only measuring ad exposures and clicks, MySpace is gather data on vistis to community pages, time spent there, whether visitors watched a video or embedded a piece of content in their page.”

Chitika recently introduced our own new web marketing vessel, the Chitka | VBU (Viral Branding Unit). We launched a Chitika | VBU campaign over the past four days. The VBU featured a video ad, promoting our advertiser mimoco, manufacturer of designer USB drives.
vbu
During this initial first campaign run, we were thrilled to report high engagement, and positive user reactions. Placed only on three premium publishers’ sites, the VBU generated an average of 2.25 user reviews per day, and received an average of 3.75 positive votes per day. Furthermore, for every visitor that viewed the mimoco VBU, 1.06% chose to play the VBU’s video clip.

[*actual qualitative and quantitative data from this campaign is available only to the client]

Qualitative metrics?

Most online marketer agree that use of conversational brand marketing tactics is effective in amplifying brand awareness across the new web, however, some are hesitant due to the fact that a standard metric for measuring qualitative data does not exist. I argue that a qualitative data metric will never be defined.

Conversational brand marketing data, defined by engagement, is unique; it literally captures the perspective of individual web users. Assigning and implementing a standard metric would serve to generalize this data, therefore take away from its full potential in representing individual web user’s engagement level.

I agree fully with blogger Brian Morrissey when he explains, “we’re not creating a standard of measurement…it’s a dynamic measurement. It’s measuring a dynamic.”

The new web’s dynamic marketplace calls for dynamic marketing strategies to target dynamic consumers.

By Tessa Rudd, Strategic Partnerships Coordinator - Advertising Media Division