Gabe Samuels thinks I need to grow up. (Registration required) And now, I must fisk...
RARELY DO I GET TO use a cliché as aptly as I do in applying it to Tom Hespos' Dec. 6th question, "When Will Online Measurement Stop Playing Follow The Leader?" The cliché is this: Those who choose to ignore the past are doomed to repeat it. And the answer to his question is the title to this piece. Hespos' lament is old, tired and unproductive! It has been heard since the first ad hit cyberspace in 1997 in the now-defunct, groundbreaking Prodigy. It is thinking like his that has kept interactive from achieving its rightful place among major media for better than ten years.
Old? Yes. I've been saying that online needs its own metrics for 10 years now. (And by the way, the first ad hit the web in 1994, not 1997.) The main reason is that reach and frequency measure exposure, not interactivity.
Tired? Yes. I'm getting tired of saying this. And I'm also getting tired of qualifying my comments by saying that we should continue to move toward completion on the reach and frequency initiative, solely for the reason that certain advertisers absolutely need to see R/F, and I'd rather have them test online marketing with substandard metrics than not test it at all.
Unproductive? Hardly. The fact remains that reach and frequency are the wrong metrics because they measure exposure and not interactivity. What's unproductive about discussing what the next generation success metrics should be? Or does Samuels think that marketing is married to R/F forever?
The history of media is rich with stories about dauntless pioneers who felt, just like Hespos, that "their" new medium deserved--nay, must--force the market to accept new metrics. A couple of brief illustrations:
This isn't about egos. This is about measuring effects. And if Samuels wants to tell the world that the Internet is good only for exposing people to a broadcast message, than I can't help him.
The early cable TV pioneers, notably Ted Turner and John Malone--and legions of their disciples--made many a recorded speech about the fact that "cable is NOT TV" and that TV metrics like Nielsen's ratings were not only inappropriate, but actually harmful to their nascent medium. In those early days (circa 1980), they were lamenting in pain. And they continued to be in pain until they finally understood the realities of the world of advertising. They only started laughing all the way to the bank when Nielsen started measuring cable. It is now about thirty years since cable started selling ads--originally expecting, by the way, to get significant price premiums because it was such a "targeted," "engaging" and, yes, "interactive" medium. Nevertheless, the three "dinosaurs" and a thousand over-the-air stations are still in business doing very well, thank you. But nobody will deny that cable is now a force to be reckoned with--and nobody will deny that being measured with the old, "inappropriate" metrics is why.
There are so many things wrong with this paragraph, I don't know where to start. Perhaps we'll start with the big, honking non sequitur that essentially argues that because cable at first didn't want to be measured like television, that the Internet should just play nice and go with the flow, because everything will turn out great in the end and people will back up giant dump trucks full of money to our houses. Nah, that argument blows itself out of the water.
How about the gaping hole in this argument? You know, the one that you could drive one of the aforementioned dump trucks full of money through...the one that that assumes that exposure is the end-all, be-all solution for success metrics. Exposure is a metric for the broadcast model, Mr. Samuels. And if you didn't notice, the broadcast model ain't doing so well in this age of interactivity and engagement. So it logically follows that perhaps exposure ain't the best metric on which to base the entire future of advertising.
Even as I write this today, the absolute oldest medium, outdoor, is embracing "old" metrics. I would bet a couple of my own hard-earned dollars that it will pay off handsomely. Arguably, the second oldest medium, yellow pages, is also accepting reality after many years of denial. This medium, too, has listened to the market and is adopting a form of "old" metrics.
Yeah, well, you don't exactly see many billboards inviting people to spray-paint their opinion all over them, do you? Outdoor can embrace old metrics because outdoor executions are designed to reach people, not interact with them.
There is a simple, unbreakable law in marketing: the customer is always right. A product, ANY product starts selling well only when a seller stops his love affair with his own product, and listens to the market.
This is the only paragraph in Samuels' article that makes any sense to me, whatsoever.
So to reprise the question: When will online measurement stop playing follow the leader? When it IS the Leader. And when will THAT happen? When it grows up!
Well, I'd offer up that one sure way to make sure online advertising remains stuck in its infancy is to bind it to old, outdated metrics and evaluate it solely that way. So what Samuels is asking is impossible if we go that route. How convenient.
I'd argue it's television, radio, print and outdoor that need to do some growing up, since all they do is broadcast messages at an audience that expects interactivity. In this way, TV is a lot like the 2-year-old child who sticks his fingers in his ears and goes, "lalalala...I'm not LISTENING!" when we try to react to something he just said. So which medium is the one that needs to grow up?
In closing, I'd like to mention that Terry Heaton wrote a wonderful reaction to Samuels' piece over on his blog. I'd be really interested to hear what other marketing bloggers think.
Re: the need to grow up.
Tom, please excuse the breach in protocol. I will say in my defense that, hard as it may be to believe, it's been years since I "submitted" (if that is the right word...) anything to a Board. So, first let me say: thank you for reading my comments so carefully. Thank you, too, for noticing a glaring (typo) error on my part. The first ad on the web did probably run in 1994 NOT in 1997. What I meant to say is that the first ad in "cyberspace" ran in 1987 -- ten years earlier in/on PRODIGY. I know that for a fact because I joined Prodigy in 1989 to service the 300 advertisers they had. My job was to supply them with "metrics" they could understand. Feeling then EXACTLY as you do NOW, I fought the good battle - trying to explain to clients that "exposure" is meaningless in the interactive age. After doing that for two years and winning ZERO support, I turned around and subscribed to ABC for a Circulation Audit and to MRI for Audience data. Do you want to take a guess at how many new advertisers Prodigy got in 1991 and 1992 - and how much more those advertisers paid for the privilege? Then in 1993, with the invention of Mosaic -- the internet, AKA ARPAnet has become the World Wide Web. Say Hello to real graphics and say Goodbye to Prodigy and Apple Link and a few others. Netscape used Mosaic as its base and the rest you know.
So let me get one thing pefectly clear: I am on the side of the angels. I do believe that other metrics will do the web more justice. I just don't believe that the market ($300 billion? or so) is ready to give up metrics they use everyday just because "webbies" (is that what we are?) stump their feet in protest.
I am glad you accepted the truth of my Marketing 101 paragraph: the customer is always right.
All I am saying is: give them what they want and then move on. And please, believe me when I say that your (our) arguments have been used by EVERY medium since time immmemorial. EVERY medium argued long and hard (with a lot of justification) that they are different. BUT, they only made it when they "grew up!". I don't mean YOU. I mean the medium.
Posted by: Gabe Samuels at December 14, 2005 03:22 PMGabe, I think we're saying much the same thing.
However, I caution agencies strongly against giving R/Fs to their clients without qualifying that the figures are simply a measure of exposure. We do need more metrics, and I wouldn't suggest refusing to give clients R/F if they ask for it. But remember that every client that evaluates the web SOLELY on R/F is a client that isn't attributing value to the interactivity of the medium.
That's when interactive will lead the pack. When we demonstrate that we have the R/F stuff to give advertisers if they absolutely have to have it, but we ALSO have these unique interactivity metrics that no one else can provide. It would be nice to see print, radio, television and OOH scrambling to catch up with us, for a change. It would also be nice to see advertisers attributing value to interactivity and conversations.
One other thing. I understand that every new medium has used similar arguments during their formative years. But let's take cable for example - Cable had no argument whatsoever, mainly because it delivered exactly the same experience (from a sound and motion perspective) as broadcast TV. The nature of the Internet experience is completely different than that of television, radio or print, so I feel justified that we should indeed have our own metrics. The market won't necessarily give up the old stuff, but it will understand that there's more to the picture.
Best,
-TFH
All comments are property of the individual poster who left them. Everything else, copyright 2005, Tom Hespos