At the moment, 94% of touchpoints are not measured. Luckily, the advertising industry is edging closer to connecting the complex matrix of touchpoints to a more accurate valuation of the role that these touch points (in communications planning) impact marketing objectives.
The reason behind this acceleration is clear. It starts with a G, ends in an E, and rhymes with Shmoogle. Google contributes 6% to all touchpoints and is the only touch point measured and attributed at the moment. However all that's about to change.
Last Click Attribution
At the Global Online Measurement Conference in Barcelona in February 2008, I was introduced to the current "crisis" around last click attribution. Simply put, this refers to the significant compensation for a click to a website to the last touch point responsible for that click i.e. attributing and rewarding the last click site with delivering the visitor (and potential customer). A large percentage of the time, this last click attributor is Google. Not that Google shouldn't be rewarded for helping someone to where they want to go or what they want to find, it's just that the industry feels that they shouldn't be rewarded SO MUCH. When 71% of paid search clicks are navigational, Google is merely acting as a directory, whereas the impactful communications effort to get that customer to seek out an advertiser to look for more information or purchase a product is not directly attributed. This has resulted in a devaluation of the 94% of touchpoints along the way. There is an imbalance, and it will be rectified!
aQuantive's Engagement Mapping
The first big step forward in this area has come from Microsoft's new acquisition, aQuantive, with the launch of Engagement Mapping. I covered this at Cannes in both the Brian McAndrews Q&A and Cannes Debate. [Note to my readers: apologies for no hyperlinks here but I still can't access my blog due to Orange's incompetence, this post is being sent remotely]. This week, I saw an excellent presentation by Ciaran McConaghy (Head of Analytics at Atlas). He highlighted the 3 key questions that marketers need answered:
- How do I reach my customers?
- How do they engage with my message?
- How do I get greater ROI?
More information on Engagement Mapping can be found on http://www.atlassolutions.com/institute.aspx
While Microsoft's apparent objective with Engagement Mapping is to help give more value to other touchpoints, like display, I can see a wider opportunity here to either 1) monetize this tool by licensing it to other publishers or 2) make it available to the entire industry and help weaken Google's stronghold. The irony of course, which Microsoft/aQuantive openly acknowledges, is that they were responsible for "last click attribution" in the first place with the creation of Atlas.
So why the sudden shift? Well as I mentioned, Google's monopoly seems to be thriving on this model – and nobody likes a monopolist. More significantly, since the proliferation of high speed broadband and high quality video content on the web, the time has come for brand advertisers to finally cross the threshold and increase their online presence and adspend. For this purpose, they need to know the contributing value in all the touch points in their communications planning to determine what works and what doesn't work in driving their objectives.
IPA Touchpoints 2 Survey
While it seems as if Engagement Mapping looks purely at online touchpoints, other media touchpoints were explored in the just launched IPA Touchpoints 2 survey. This claims to be the only piece of research available to agencies, media owners and clients, evaluating an individual's exposure to all communications channels and platforms. The highlights are in this week's Campaign (p11, 11 July 2008), written by Jim Marshall (Chairman of the IPA's Futures Media Group and of Starcom UK). It provides great insight into understanding consumer's media behavior, ranging from time and place of media consumption, to media meshing (the use of different media types at the same time). Touchpoints 2 follows Touchpoints 1, and includes a broader range of digital media including social media and IPTV. The results show interesting trends in behaviour across different demographics e.g. 36% of texting (SMS) takes place when TV is being watched, 17% when the radio is being listened to, 14% when the internet is used and 7% when reading. I'm assuming that folks are putting their books down to send the text and not holding a book in one hand and a phone in another.
These 2 developments in touchpoints research and measurement are a great step forward in furthering the understanding, integration and use of digital media. I hope these are embraced by marketers, as according to Roisin Donnely (P&G UK Marketing Chief), the largest FMCG budgets will not move online unless the industry introduces robust measurement techniques.
