September 2, 2011

Click Click BOOM

Remember when you were a kid and your teacher asked you to imagine a product from the future?  Did you imagine something that has already been developed or are you still waiting?

How about now?

Do you still dream about products made better?  Your job?  Your car?  Your pastime?

I do constantly.  As the intimidating-ly witty George Bernard Shaw once said, “Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.”  (Some women, too, Georgie.)

I was called out on Twitter a few weeks back to comment on an article about customized advertising.  Sadly, I was not able to find the article when I went back to look for it, but this idea of “personalized” ads is really nothing new.

Personally, I’m still waiting on my favorite channels and sites to offer me the choice of which ads I see.  I’m happy to tell them and I would opt-in to good creative, messaging and offers.  But if I’m shown one more Lighting Direct or Shutterfly banner (yes I went to your sites, how about a frequency cap or, I don’t know, a creative refresh?) or Gout/Depression/ED TV spot (really?  Suitable for BROADcast?  Um, no.)… I swear I’ll swear!

I remember a favorite phrase from a former boss as, “People don’t hate advertising; they hate irrelevant advertising.”  The way our industry has been doing customization is through content or behavioral targeting.  “You’re a mom?  Well, you MUST be in family content!”  “You’ve visited a mobile phone site for three weeks running, you MUST be in-market for a new smartphone.”

Another friend recently bemoaned on her Facebook page, “Haven’t we moved past the CTR metric?”  Well, the sad answer is ‘no’ we haven’t.  A disproportionate number of campaigns still default to CTR for determining success when everyone knows that consumers don’t click on ads.  Even Google, who made themselves bazillionaires establishing CTR as the model for search success, admits that only one in 1000 will click on an ad.

It isn’t that targeting or CTR are BAD… they’re just insufficient in telling the whole story of brand marketing online.

So in 2011, we find ourselves in a ‘Click Clique’ where audiences won’t and brands want.  And we hate it.

A few companies are trying to monetize “time spent” and “engagement” with mixed results.  But, it’s hard to change behavior when buying has long been built around clicks because, quite frankly, after the dot-bomb, we needed something tangible to offer marketers to keep our heads, if not our jobs.

Some brands are still unconvinced that they should be using online advertising for brand marketing at all.

No, really.

(Just reading that is like a slap in the face of anyone responsible for keeping the Internet free.)

Facebook and Neilsen have teamed up to prove the value of online. (Evidently, they missed the work of Rex Briggs and others over the last eleven years.)

I think Phyllis Zimbler Miller nailed it in her OpEd, er blog post, on Technorati.com where she wrote, “waiting for proof of effectiveness of online brand advertising is very misguided.”  I hope I don’t sound like a tonic-salesman or queen of the obvious, but the nuances of influence aren’t linear.

This discussion reveals much about our industry and the way we have evolved.  There is still so much mistrust and misdirection.  There are still many unscrupulous publishers and unsavory advertisers lurking about.

But what are the rest of us to do?

How do we find ways to combine strengths and smarten each other up?

Some companies merge or make ginormous gestures with capital and stock.  But not every company can or should.  Sometimes small steps in the right direction make tremendous impact.  I think what Technorati Media is doing to integrate the engagement metrics from our (proprietary) social ads into our advertisers’ dashboards is a giant leap forward in collaboration and progress.

As social marketing continues to evolve and “Like us on Facebook” goes the way of “AOL Keyword:…”, engagement may just establish itself as a legitimate, measureable, and useful metric for marketers.  Maybe we’ll see someone create an influence footprint tool for brands.  Maybe social marketing will stop being its own category of digital marketing and simply a component (or ten!) of every campaign.

The unknown in our industry is one of its greatest appeals to me – and continues to prove the adage that ‘none of us is as smart as all of us.’  The playbook continues to be written, which means that someone knows what’s next.

Is it you?

Christine Ryder is a 14-year digital advertising veteran day-lighting as
director of sales for Technorati Media.

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