When Research Conflicts With Behavior

A recent study by Forrester (source) showed that 79% of consumers find ads on their mobile phones irritating unless it's relevant. "Duh" number two of the day. I would submit that 95%+ of all consumers find 95%+ of all advertising irritating. Is this really news?

Add to this that our mobile ad campaigns are outperforming traditional online campaigns 7x-20x, and now I'm really confused.

Keeping Pace With Change

Consumers don't submit their intended media consumption schedule to advertisers for pre-approval to make sure it lines up with what the advertiser wants. Duh. Because of this, marketers need to be on pace with consumers and follow their media habits to be successful, not what worked in the past, or what the friend of a client says he or she watches.

Recently I found this which explains how Fox is working to find a way to update ad content within programs that have been tivo'd and due to the time sensitivity of the copy (movie opens this Friday isn't relevant if you're watching the show six days later.) This is a nice idea, although I don't think it'll be ground breaking because 60% of DVR users ffwd through ad content anwyay. Nonetheless I was still a little shocked to know that marketers are still wishing all this new media would go away. Here is a quote from the article:

"Ideally, we'd like it so that nobody fast-forwarded through any commercial," said Shari Cohen, co-executive director, national broadcast, MindShare. "I don't even know if it's possible to create a greater relevancy to watching it live rather than on a home basis. The spots are still going to be fast-forwarded through."

She got the last part right.

The Quality (In)equation

One of the most common selling points used by online and emerging media is content/property quality. If you think about it, this is a pretty slick sales technique. Who wants to say they don't care about quality? Because of the frequency in which I hear this, I want to take a look at quality, define it, and determine how that definition impacts the value of properties that are most typically seen as being high quality.

In many people's minds quality is interchangeable with recognizable. Ask 100 folks in advertising which online vehicle is of higher quality - Yahoo or alllyrics.com. Even if you offer "not enough information" as an option (and it's correct answer, at that), I suspect significantly more people will answer Yahoo than alllyrics.com. Why? For starters, the participant in this survey has probably been to Yahoo and not alllyrics.com. The Lake Woebegone syndrome leads people to define themselves as above average and creates the desire to associate themselves with "quality." This theoretical scenario would likely play out similarly using online, mobile, or video game ad networks and their site lists as well.

Traditionally brands with large budgets historically targeted "quality" consumers, which translated to those with enough disposable income to purchase their product. Reaching these consumers mostly meant prime time on TV and drive time on radio. This original idea of quality, I submit, somehow morphed to be defined more as "large audience" and "recognizable" than reaching a consumer likely to be considering or intending to buy your product. After all, how many people in advertising would qualify Judge Judy as higher quality programming than Grey's Anatomy? A personal injury attorney's media buyer - that's who!

And therein lies the crux of the problem. Reaching the largest number of consumers within the target audience with the least amount of waste is real quality. Ultimately, quality equals efficiency. In automotive, no more than 1% of the population will be in market to buy any given new vehicle in the next six months. Six months! 1%! Yet look at the deluge of auto advertising in prime time TV reaching 80%+ of a (very broad) demo. I'm not here to pick on broadcast or any one category. This is just an example of how the definition of quality has perhaps gotten away from us.

Defining quality as efficiency means that no matter what product you're marketing, you're audience is likely to be found on a mix of large (recognizable) and small (obscure) properties. And, because every product has a slightly different target buyer profile, one publisher or network of web sites, mobile web sites, or even video games simply can't be the highest quality for everyone. Will Dollar General, Ferrari and REI all find their best prospects on one network, portal, or publisher site? Not only is it unlikely, but this is all the more reason to look hard at how you define quality and more importantly, the metrics you're measuring with your campaign. The truth is that you can likely find your prospects efficiently across multiple properties and networks. With thorough cost/result projections it’s possible that properties and networks traditionally pegged as "high quality" do not actually give you the best return.

To be fair, there are other factors that go into a property's or network's quality. What type of targeting is offered? Behavioral? Contextual? What type of environment do you want your brand to be seen in? Targeting capabilities are more easily measured within the campaign itself, where as environment quality either has to have a direct impact on the campaign’s performance, or will need to be measured through other consumer research. Are there mechanisms in place to measure the impact of factors not directly contributing to this campaign’s success? If not, “quality” is hard to measure.

The purchase funnel is a byproduct of human behavior, which none of us is going to change here and now. It’s just as important to apply metrics to upper and mid-funnel campaigns as it is those targeting lower funnel consumers (presumably through leads.) Once a campaign is identified as fitting in a particular point in the funnel, the metrics are easily derived and a successful campaign measured.

Do Yahoo, MSN, and AOL Have Something Google Doesn't?

As online and other emerging media become less about sites and more about user data, individual sites, ad networks, and even Google face an uphill challenge keeping up if the big three portals get the next step right.

A couple months ago I was in the market to buy a car. Having visited the major auto sites like Edmunds, cars.com, Yahoo autos and others, I wasn't surprised to see that nearly every ad I was served over those two months was auto-related. A fine example of behavioral targeting. However, in that same time frame I used the mobile web on my cell phone a number of times and never once saw an automotive ad. What a lost opportunity!

This is where the big three portals have a tremendous advantage of they can move quickly. Because they have subscriber or user data - and tons of it - and their users inevitably access their content from both mobile and online, the ability to target users from one medium to another seamlessly for an advertiser should be no problem at all.

Not to say that networks can't do this at all - it'll just be harder. An online network, mobile web network, and video game network could form an alliance to share and use data between media but how do you identify the person as they move from one medium to another? With Yahoo it's easy. They log on to check their email online, and then do the same on their phone. Not much guesswork there. However, online cookies don't transfer to other media. It would require behavioral partnerships with properties that do have access to consumers that log in across multiple media platforms and the ability to share and compile that data.

And what of Google? Well, if the DC acquisition does indeed go through, they'll have access to pretty much any and every piece of online data they could want. With mobile being a 2007 priority for DC, it brings us right back to the suggestion that one or all of the portals not just implement these capabilities, but that they do so very quickly.

Media Alignment

Let me start with the obvious. When using more than one medium in a campaign it's important to determine before launching that campaign whether these different media will each seek to achieve the same objective (create awareness for a new product), each touch on different parts of the purchase funnel (i.e. broadcast drives awareness while direct mail drives sales) or a combination of both where media may overlap in some areas. While obvious, this point is important because right now we're often seeing each medium's purpose being designated by the degree of measurability they offer.

Since TV isn't measurable, TV should drive awareness. Since online is measurable it will serve as a direct response medium and will be measured 100% against sales. Time out. This just doesn't make sense!

TV absolutely can be measured. Infomercials develop their creative and buy their media using highly scientific formulas to drive success. But it's not just TV. Think of any infomercial-esque product you've seen advertised lately - any medium - and it's likely they were very successful using direct response marketing. Using this line of thinking, Why then shouldn't 100% of our media be fully measurable? Why ever run a brand ad?

Because of the purchase funnel, that's why! See our previous blog post about the man who goes to buy the engagement ring. If everyone skipped all steps of the dating process except the proposal, very few people would ever get married. The same applies to marketing a product, service or brand. This seems so darn obvious but because most marketing isn't measured, it's natural to desire nothing but the end result when measurement is possible.

We talk to clients all the time who pour hundreds of millions of dollars into creative and media and have no intention of measuring one dime of it. And I'm not just referring to measuring it against sales. It's not even held up against metrics from an A&A study to at least ensure they're moving in the right direction! Inevitably when we're called in, the program must be 100% measurable.

It may be surprising but we love this. The more measurable the better. What should be understood, though, is that promotions which are 100% measurable can't use the same tactics as top or mid-funnel brand advertising does. For instance, in our last post we talked about program, content and site quality. In top funnel campaigns, placing advertising within recognizable content (i.e. Prime Time TV) might make sense. It's doubtful that awareness will skyrocket upward after a schedule centered around spots running solely from midnight to 6a.

However, the lower in the funnel a brand targets, the more efficient the promotion and associated media must become. In this case, those late night/early morning rotators might be the most efficient plan to drive positive ROI. Tactics like this, whether in traditional media, experiential, or online and emerging media, all have tremendous benefits and stand a better chance to drive a positive ROI because the marketing elements being used are less expensive to begin with.

The real question then is whether or not a company has the stomach to take this traditionally unpopular route of disregarding how recognizable its programming, venue or site list is in favor of a better chance of increased ROI. The answer to that question will correlate proportionately with how measurable that portion of the marketing plan can be.