The toughest challenge for marketers…

In a recent marketing and media survey by Datran Media marketers was asked to address their toughest challenges in this increasingly difficult economy. Survey results showed a definitive move toward leveraging online marketing measurement tools, and a focus on emerging digital and social channels for reaching target audiences.

However accuracy topped the list of marketers’ biggest challenges around measurement – the lack of ability to take action on data and lack of standards are also key barriers. So the next natural question has to be “What are the marketers then measuring effectively?”;

According to the survey, clicks are reported to be the most prevalent metric collected by survey respondents; however, clicks do not tell the whole story. Clicks might give marketers an idea of the route taken by a customer, but they do not show the finish line. A click is just one step, a single chapter in the audience measurement story. Further down the funnel, marketers are measuring conversions, transactions, and impressions, and 40.2 percent are now measuring audience too. Survey respondents ranked conversions (89.3 percent), click-throughs (59.8 percent), and unique views (42.9 percent) as most important. This is good news as, in general, marketers have at least agreed upon baseline metrics for measuring the digital channel from a direct conversion perspective.

During the last ½ year there has been a lot of talk about attribution weighting, sales funnels etc. and you can’t overlook the value of a banner impression or any interaction with a banner. I believe that interaction rates, dwell time etc. will become dominant measures of online ad effectiveness in the future; or at least it will for those who understand what they’re doing online…

What do you think?

Sources: iMedia Connection