June 1st, 2009
Hardball for a soft science
The most emailed business article on The New York Times
website today is this one: “Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise.” It’s about the arrival of Wall Street-style analytics to online advertising. I read the article yesterday with a sense of great anticipation. It felt like the dawning of a new era.
The article describes the use of data mining to improve an ad’s reach and effectiveness. Ads can be placed, tested, and evaluated in a matter of days. Without much risk or investment, brands can test incentives, images, even messages before investing in a high stakes campaign…or they can choose not to go with the high stakes campaign at all.
My hope is that taking the guesswork out of the process will help eliminate the scattershot that has passed for media planning for too long. As companies get smarter about reaching the right people at the right time with the right message, we all benefit. More salience = less NOISE.
A more sophisticated use of data in advertising is something that’s been sorely needed. When I was working in viral and buzz marketing in 2003–2005, the most common question asked by clients about our guerilla proposals was, “How will we know it’s working?” The standard line at the time was, “It’s a leap of faith.” We asked clients to trust us and then justified the lack of measurement tools by pointing to the relatively small outlay of cash. What’s $75,000 for a celebrity-studded event that might
get picked up in the gossip columns when you’re spending $3.5 MM for the campaign and it’s no more certain to lead to purchase? Reluctantly they gave the green light. When it worked we were heroes.
Of course, the article deals with a relatively small (albeit growing) segment of advertising and that is ONLINE advertising. But, it’s only a matter of time before more aspects of marketing shift from the soft sciences to the hard.
The one thing I offer as a caution to those marketers interested in exploiting these new measurement tools is the danger of falling into a Twitter-like cycle of inanity. As the article points out: “From the ‘Mad Men’ era until now, advertising has been about a catchy tagline, an arresting image, the Big Idea. But Mr. Herman and his competitors are bringing some Wall Street-like analysis to Madison Avenue, exploiting the huge amounts of data produced by the Internet to adjust strategy almost instantly.” Let’s not replace the tyranny of The Big Idea with the indecision of infinite possibilities. It remains to be seen whether the ability to change messages daily will lead to a new form of brand identity confusion.
And finally, as a woman who has acted as an advocate for consumers for over a decade, I want to emphasize the importance of collaboration between ‘the numbers guys’ and the ‘people people.’ As exciting as these advances in our business are, I am still a big believer in the human factor. Not to say the data doesn’t tell a great story–it does, just not the whole story. Human beings are inherently unpredictable. While data mining will get us closer to the mark, it will still be necessary to work with companies like mine to get under the surface, beneath the skin, and to the heart of what is essentially a transaction between people.