Online Brand Measurement:

June 2009
Introduction
In 2009, US advertisers will spend $4.7 billion on
display ads, and another $3.1 billion on other
branding-oriented ads, including rich media and
video. But are they getting their money’s worth?
Does online brand measurement even work? Do
marketers have the metrics they need to connect
the dots—both within online platforms and
between online and offline media?
Authored by eMarketer CEO and co-founder Geoff Ramsey, this
special report addresses these questions and many more.
A Look Inside Total Access: This report gives you a sample of
the premium content that is exclusive to eMarketer Total Access
subscribers. For more information on what Total Access can do for
your business, day after day, visit www.emarketer.com, or contact
us at 212-763-6010 or 800-405-0844 (toll-free).
®
Geoffrey Ramsey,
CEO & Co-Founder
geoff@emarketer.com
Online Brand
Measurement:
Connecting the Dots
More Available Online
Special Report
We encourage you to view this special report online
at www.emarketer.com/brandmeasurement for
access to videos, in-depth interviews and full
survey results (courtesy of InsightExpress). On the
report Website, you can also join the conversation
on this important topic by contributing comments.
Digital Intelligence Copyright ©2009 eMarketer, Inc. All rights reserved.

Geoff Ramsey: Why This Report?
Measurement means different things to different
people—but most can agree that in business,
measurement is vital to long-term success.
I’ll never forget my first experience with measurement. When I
was 12 years old, my family moved to the UK, exposing me to a
new school system and a decidedly different way of measuring
student performance. Instead of the generalized feedback I was
used to in Michigan, such as “needs to try harder,” the UK students
were ranked from 1 through n (where n = however-manystudents-were-in-the-class).
Granted, it was a blunt measure. And
at the end of the first marking period, I was ranked last in every
single subject, from Latin to mathematics. Ouch.
Remarkably, though, this measurement system had a profound
effect on me. I started paying attention in class and generally
worked like a dog. By the end of the last marking period, my rank
had elevated to No. 1 or No. 2 in each class.
Could the online advertising industry benefit from a similar
transformation if better brand measurement systems were put in
place? Does the industry have the right metrics to be able to
connect the dots—both within online platforms and between online
and offline media? That’s what this report was designed to uncover.
Online brand measurement has been on my mind for some time
now. After moderating industry panels with session titles such as
“Fixing the Measurement Mess” or “Is Data Friend or Enemy?” it
became clear that we had some major challenges to overcome.
That feeling was confirmed when eMarketer commissioned
InsightExpress to conduct a poll of industry stakeholders. On a
scale of 1 (we’re still in the Dark Ages) to 10 (we’ve got this all
figured out), a majority (51%) rated the current state of online
brand measurement at 5 or below. Ouch again.
® Online
This report was made possible by contributions from many
individuals, who offered their time, expertise and razor-sharp
thinking on an incredibly complicated topic, including many of my
hard-working colleagues at eMarketer. In particular, I want to thank
senior analyst David Hallerman, who shored up my original draft
with much-needed improvements; writer/editor Tobi Elkin, who
conducted more than two dozen high-level interviews; and Evelyn
Majewski, who analyzed and provided a contextual summary of
the InsightExpress poll of industry professionals.
I am also grateful for the commitment and friendship of the
industry leaders who agreed to be interviewed or come into
our offices for video sessions. I offer special thanks to David
Smith of Mediasmith, a legend in online measurement, who
acted as a sounding board and sanity check for many of my
points and conclusions.
The process of writing this report was like absorbing the
collective consciousness of the online ad industry, and it
convinced me to change my views on a number of key issues. I
hope it opens your mind to some new ideas and provides a forum
for the industry to move forward on this important subject of
online brand measurement.
Please take the time to share your comments and thoughts.
Collectively, we can begin to connect the dots—and maybe we
can move to an 8 or 9 out of 10 sooner rather than later.
Geoffrey Ramsey
CEO, Co-Founder, eMarketer
Brand Measurement: Special Report 2

Letter from Our Sponsor,
Datran Media
When I first heard that eMarketer was publishing
a study dedicated to online measurement, I got
excited, because I felt that the timing couldn’t
be any better.
We are witnessing a very interesting period in the industry where
advertisers are no longer simply buying media on Web sites to
reach a particular audience, but instead are actually targeting
users. The explosion of exchanges and behavioral data targeting
has suddenly made the term “remnant” important and sexy. Let’s
face it, this is not a just a trend, but rather a clear movement
towards leveraging the plethora of data that differentiates the
Internet from any other form of media. Even when advertisers buy
from an individual site, they are now expecting to target specific
users with relevant demographics or behavior. Although this
appears to be a subtle switch, it actually has a profound effect on
the industry, especially when it comes to measurement. Think
about it. The measurement tools that exist on the Web today were
created to address the desire to determine the most popular sites
by attempting to count the number of unique visits to individual
sites on a monthly basis. These tools were not really developed to
provide valid insights into the user behind the browser.
Perhaps in the early days of the Internet when people were
focused on buying homepages or sponsorships, knowing the
most popular sports-related Web site was actually relevant. But let
me ask you a question, if you are only buying four million unique
impressions, does it really matter whether the site reaches 20 or
30 million visitors a month? Although instinctively most of us want
to say yes, chances are the answer is no. Advertisers should be
shifting from asking what site is the most popular to wondering
“who specifically am I reaching?”, “is this who I am intending to
reach?” and “what is the impact on my brand?”
® Online
Unfortunately the industry is still stuck in a rut over counting
methodologies. Yet at the end of the day, the only figures that
typically matter come from an advertiser’s third party ad server, as
this is what determines the money actually spent on advertising.
Until the debate switches from unique user counting to the
accuracy and quality of data about the individuals exposed to and
interacting with the ad campaign, we will be holding back the
potential of the industry. Not to say that the number of monthly
visitors isn’t at all relevant to publishers or advertisers, but let’s put
that challenge into perspective and focus resources on moving
the market forward with the type of audience measurement that
today’s marketer truly needs.
I trust that this timely report will give us all a lot of food for thought
and we are delighted to be sponsoring it. No one knows exactly
what measurement will consist of in five years, but I guarantee it
will evolve greatly from what exists today. This study should
provide us with not only the current challenges, but also a hint of
things to come. Enjoy the report and let the debates begin!
Sincerely,
Scott C. Knoll
SVP Display and GM Aperture Product Group, Datran Media
Brand Measurement: Special Report 3

What are Analytics Really
Telling You about Your Audience
Advertisers and marketers have long searched, with mixed
results, for proof that their campaigns are e�ective. For the
interactive industry, integrity in audience measurement is a
fundamental necessity. After all, accurate reporting and transparency
is critical when planning future media buys, segmenting
audiences, and optimizing marketing mixes.
How crucial do you feel analytics can be in dictating future ad
campaigns? (% of respondents)
The methodologies that most media is measured by today are
over 70 years old! Panel-based research was initially developed to
help radio advertisers understand how many listeners were
exposed to their campaign. Ironically, not much has changed in
the world of media measurement. Although in recent years,
ISP-based measurement has made some attempts to improve the
way audiences are quanti�ed.
Clearly, online advertisers need deeper insights into who they're
reaching. In today’s competitive atmosphere, where targeting
very speci�c audiences is increasingly important, the old-world
methodologies are becoming less relevant.
Do you currently leverage audience analytics? (% of respondents)
Yes 76%
No 26%
Very 69.2%
Not at All .8%
Somewhat
30%
Source: Datran Media, “Third Annual Marketing & Media Survey,” January 2009
Source: Datran Media, “Third Annual Marketing & Media Survey,” January 2009
With more and more marketers relying on analytics to shape their
campaigns, new tools are being developed for today’s online
advertiser, as evidenced by the recent launch of Datran Media’s
Aperture. Aperture is the �rst and only audience reporting tool
that delivers consumer pro�les across all digital media, based on
third-party veri�ed household-level data. Anonymously combining
veri�ed o�ine data with the online activity of over 100 million
consumers, this rich data provides unprecedented insights into
the audience that is exposed to, has responded to, and is
converting on an advertiser’s campaign.
ADVERTISEMENT
Verified consumer data is the key to accurate reporting
Current methodologies are outdated
Most research sample sizes are statistically insignificant
Audiences need to be measured at the campaign and
creative level, not just site level
19,312,785 41,228 2,
impressions clicks conv
INFLUENCE (share of impressions)
DEMOGRAPHICS
College Grad
36-45 yrs (Adult Age)
Females 35-44 yrs
Males 35-44 yrs
pressions indexed to internet
Aperture measures
household- level
demographics across the entire
media chain – from impressions
to clicks to conversions.
FINANCE
$250k (Net Worth)
Bank Card
$100k (Income)
Adult Age (all) Sampling Percent 62%
86-99 yrs
76-85 yrs
66-75 yrs
56-65 yrs
46-55 yrs
36-45 yrs
26-35 yrs
18-25 yrs
HOUS
Aperture answers the questions every digital
marketer is asking:
Am I reaching the right audience?
Who is responding to my campaign?
Should I be targeting new audiences?
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
To understand who your audience truly is, you need a reporting tool
that is designed for the 21st century digital marketer. To learn more
about Aperture, please visit datranmedia.com/insight
1-2
1
A Datran Media Solution

Table of Contents
Introduction 1
More Available Online 1
Geoff Ramsey: Why This Report? 2
Letter from Our Sponsor, Datran Media 3
Table of Contents
Background: Factors that Contribute to the
5
Measurement Issue 5
What Does ‘Measurement’ Mean? 5
Putting Measurement into Perspective 6
The Accountability Factor 7
What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand
Measurement 10
Total Online Spending—Slow but Positive Growth Ahead 10
Search versus Display Trends 11
Dollar Trends Don’t Tell the Whole Story
Beyond Banners: Other Online Formats Will Boost Overall
14
Branding Dollars 15
Drill Down: What Are the Problems? 16
A General Apathy Toward Branding 16
A Preoccupation with Search, at the Expense of Branding 18
An Addiction to Clicks
Do Traditional Measurement Techniques Work for New
21
Media? 22
Integration Is Hard When Data Is Locked in Silos 23
Too Much Information, Too Much Complexity 24
Current Measurement Models Have Limitations 25
Measurement of Social and Video Are Even Further Behind 26
Data Spotlight: How Online Brand Advertising
Can Influence Every Step Along the Consumer
Purchase Funnel 27
How Display Ads Impact Brand Metrics 28
Integrating Search and Display Ad Measurements 29
How Display Ads Drive Site Traffic 30
How Display Ads Impact Online Sales 30
How Display Ads Influence Offline Purchases 31
Three Factors for Online Branding Success 33
Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand
Measurement 35
Big Picture: Five Broad Approaches 35
It All Starts with Marketing Objectives 36
The Need for Uniform Standards 36
Integrate Online and Offline Measurement and Metrics 39
Embrace Traditional Media Metrics 39
Get Smart About Attribution Modeling 42
® Online
Building New Measurement Models for Social and Video
Environments 44
Unraveling Consumer Engagement Metrics 46
Next Steps: A Seven-Point Plan 47
Endnotes 49
Related Information and Links 52
Contact 55
Report Contributors 55
eMarketer Total Access: How to Make Better
Digital Business Decisions 55
Brand Measurement: Special Report 5

Background: Factors that
Contribute to the Measurement
Issue
US advertisers will spend $4.7 billion on display
ads in 2009, and another $3.1 billion on other
branding-oriented ads, including rich media and
video. But are they getting their money’s worth?
Do they have the right metrics, and are they able
to connect the dots, both within online platforms
and between online and offline media? Is online
brand measurement even a problem that needs
to be fixed?
This special report will seek answers to these questions, and
many more.
“It’s time for digital media to grow up and for
clients who are running full-on marketing
campaigns to really understand how their
campaigns are performing if they spend $5
million or $1 million or $800,000 online,
across various sites and fragmented
audiences.” —Curt Hecht, president, Publicis Groupe’s
VivaKi Nerve Center, in an interview with eMarketer,
April 22, 2009
What Does ‘Measurement’ Mean?
In exploring online brand measurement today, marketers need to
be careful to separate out its two basic components:
■ How successfully and efficiently did I reach my intended
target consumer?
■ Did my advertising campaign influence the consumer’s
attitudes, perceptions or behaviors associated with the brand?
“One question is about ad effectiveness, and the other is the
currency that is bought and sold,” said Young-Bean Song, senior
director of analytics and the Atlas Institute for Microsoft
Advertising, in an interview with eMarketer. “In an ideal world,
those would be the same thing. That’s one of the good things
about direct response advertising, where you’re paying somebody
for a sale that occurs on their network or you’re paying for a click.
Both the currency and the measure of effectiveness are the same
thing. But in the world of branding, things get a lot more abstract.
You still have to pay for something, but you’re not going to pay for
branding ad effectiveness.”
® Online
Putting Measurement into Perspective
In April 2009, eMarketer used online survey company
InsightExpress to poll 37 high-level, highly knowledgeable
marketing professionals with expertise in the field of media
measurement. The purpose was to gauge their opinions on the
state of online brand measurement.
To get a level set on the degree to which measurement is seen
as a significant barrier to the growth of online advertising, the
respondents were asked whether they agreed with the
following statement:
“Other than the economy, brand measurement is the
single biggest obstacle holding back the growth of
online advertising.”
A little under one-half of respondents, or 43.2%, agreed that
measurement is the major obstacle aside from the overall economy.
US Marketing Executives Who Agree that Brand
Measurement Is Holding Back the Growth of Online
Advertising, April 2009 (% of respondents)
Disagree
56.8%
Note: n=37
Source: eMarketer, "Online Brand Measurement Survey" conducted by
InsightExpress, June 2009
104486 www.eMarketer.com
104486
But while 56.8% of respondents disagreed with the statement,
their answers for alternative obstacles varied. In general, they
centered around three broad themes. But as this report makes
clear, each of these obstacles is, in fact, an integral part of the core
measurement problem. Taken together, they pinpoint the key
challenges facing the industry. The following quotations provide
some elaboration.
Obstacle: Too much focus on direct response
■ “Overinfluence of direct response metrics. Perhaps these are
two sides of the same coin but still, today, there is a large
school of thought that direct response is the basic benefit of
online advertising.”
■ “A myopic focus on direct response ads and immediate
gratification.”
Brand Measurement: Special Report 6
Agree
43.2%

Background: Factors that Contribute to the Measurement Issue
Obstacle: Lack of creativity
■ “A lack of CMO and marketing creative focus on online efforts,
and true measurement of buying influences.”
■ “Brand measurement is certainly one area that needs to
improve, but also improved creative and CMOs’ understanding
of the platform are also a priority.”
Obstacle: Lack of understanding about how
digital works
■ “Understanding how online fits in with other media.”
■ “Vision, imagination, ideas, experience. We are still in an early
stage of adoption for many companies, where many marketers
just don’t have the bandwidth or experience to make digital
work, let alone sync with the rest of their marketing programs.”
■ “The problem is subjective, not quantitative: It is about
experience with the medium and belief in its virtues.”
To further quantify where the online ad industry is with
measurement today, the InsightExpress poll also asked
respondents to rate the measurement issue on a continuum from
1 to 10, where 1 is “We are in the Dark Ages,” and 10 is “We’ve got
this thing totally figured out.” Not a single one of the 37
respondents rated online ad measurement a 9 or 10. Only 16.2%
of respondents rated measurement a 7 or higher, and just under
one-half rated it at least a 6.
The bottom line: A slight majority (51.3%) believed online
measurement is at a grade of 5 or below. Clearly, the interactive ad
industry has a problem on its hands.
US Marketing Executives' Ratings* of the State of
Online Advertising Measurement, April 2009 (% of
respondents)
10 0.0%
9 0.0%
8 2.7%
7 13.5%
6 32.4%
5 18.9%
4 13.5%
3 16.2%
2 2.7%
1 0.0%
Note: n=37; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding; *on a scale
of 1-10, where 1="We are in the Dark Ages" and 10="We've got this thing
totally figured out"
Source: eMarketer, "Online Brand Measurement Survey" conducted by
InsightExpress, June 2009
104488 www.eMarketer.com
104488
® Online
If there is any solace, it’s in the slight improvement over the years.
When asked how they would have rated online measurement five
years ago, a whopping 78% of respondents said they would have
rated it a 4 or lower, with nearly one-third (29.7%) rating it a
pathetic 2.
US Marketing Executives' Ratings* of the State of
Online Advertising Measurement Five Years Ago, April
2009 (% of respondents)
10 0.0%
9 0.0%
8 0.0%
7 0.0%
6 8.1%
5 13.5%
4 24.3%
3 18.9%
2 29.7%
1 5.4%
Note: n=37; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding; *on a scale
of 1-10, where 1="We are in the Dark Ages" and 10="We've got this thing
totally figured out"
Source: eMarketer, "Online Brand Measurement Survey" conducted by
InsightExpress, June 2009
104492 www.eMarketer.com
Brand Measurement: Special Report 7
104492
Looking to the future, respondents gave the industry an average of
three to five years before online measurement would attain a
score of 8 or above.
In One Word, Describe Online Measurement
Today
In the informal poll eMarketer conducted among industry
insiders, we asked them, “What single word or phrase
would you use to describe the current state of online
advertising measurement?” The answers were telling—
strongly reinforcing the idea that the online ad industry
has a long road ahead.

Background: Factors that Contribute to the Measurement Issue
The Accountability Factor
Even before the recession, marketers were under tremendous
pressure to better account for their advertising outlays. The
downturn only reinforced and accelerated the need to set specific
marketing goals and carefully measure results from ad campaigns.
“Marketers have been challenged to be more accountable by
CEOs who are looking for shareholder return and value,” said Bob
Liodice, the president and CEO of the Association of National
Advertisers, in an interview with eMarketer. “The challenge for
marketing is: ‘Prove to me that marketing works. Prove to me that
no matter how you slice it, the investments are paying back in
both short- and long-term deliverables.’”
Many studies underscore the accountability mandate for
marketing, including a 2009 survey by the Lenskold Group and
MarketSphere in which 65% of marketers worldwide said that
CEOs and CFOs are demanding to see ROI as a part of securing
budgets for marketing initiatives. Seventy-nine percent of the
marketers felt that the need to measure, analyze and report
marketing effectiveness was greater in 2009 than in previous years.
Another 2009 survey, from JupiterResearch and Verse Group, found
that achieving measurable ROI on marketing efforts was the No. 1
priority of US marketers for 2009. Second on their list was developing
marketing programs that integrate online and traditional media.
Leading Priorities for US Marketers in 2009 (% of
respondents)
Achieving measurable ROI on my marketing efforts
50%
Developing marketing programs that integrate online and
traditional media
43%
Translating the brand experience across different touchpoints
32%
Cutting marketing budgets without cutting performance
31%
Optimizing our portfolio of brands
26%
Selecting better methods to uncover relevant consumer insights
23%
Measuring brand effectiveness
20%
Refreshing our brand's image
19%
Evolving our brand as the company's business strategy evolves
18%
Building a corporate culture rooted in our brand
17%
Note: n=101
Source: JupiterResearch and Verse Group, "CMO Priorities for 2009,"
February 2009
102141 www.eMarketer.com
emarketer_2000584_102141
® Online
A study by Heidrick & Struggles of 111 US senior executives found
that return on marketing investment was the highest-ranked
marketing tactic in terms of importance to the company’s growth
objectives, rating a 4.05 on a scale of 1 to 5. Notably, online display
ads were way down on the priority list, rating a paltry 2.86 out of 5.
Executives’ satisfaction with online display ads was similarly poor,
at 3.07. However, satisfaction levels with social networking tools
(2.75) and video ads (2.65) were far worse.
Satisfaction Level of US* Senior Executives Regarding
Their Company's Effectiveness at Developing Select
Marketing Tactics, November-December 2008 (scale of 1-5**)
Publishing tools–Webinars
3.96
Research and analysis–online surveys
3.25
Research and analysis–Website activity analysis
3.14
Promotions–contests/sweepstakes
3.11
Publishing tools–e-mail newsletters
3.11
Websites/applications–microsites
3.07
Advertising–online display ads
3.07
Research and analysis–return on marketing investment (ROMI)
analysis
3.07
SEO–pay-per-click search ads
3.05
Collaboration and process tools–project management/marketing
process tools
3.00
SEO
3.00
SEO–search-related landing pages
2.96
Promotions–gaming
2.96
Partner tools–supplier/customer intranets
2.93
Publishing tools–blogs
2.75
Websites/applications–social networking tools
2.75
Websites/applications–e-commerce sites
2.69
Collaboration and process tools–customer relationship
management (CRM) (sales process)
2.68
Advertising–video ads (e.g., on YouTube)
2.65
Advertising–mobile ads
2.58
Note: n=111; *90% of respondents are US-based; **1=not satisfied and
5=very satisfied
Source: Heidrick & Struggles, "The Digital Marketing Standard," provided to
eMarketer, April 20, 2009
103679 www.eMarketer.com
emarketer_2000584_103679
Brand Measurement: Special Report 8

Background: Factors that Contribute to the Measurement Issue
Again, the growing pull toward more accountability in marketing is
only reinforced by the severe economic climate. In the CMO Council’s
annual “Marketing Outlook 2009” report among 650 marketing
professionals worldwide, fully one-half said they were cutting their
marketing budgets this year.As Liz Miller,VP of programs and
operations at the CMO Council, said in the April 6, 2009, issue of BtoB
magazine,“Everything we have seen and possibly predicted was that
a typical knee-jerk reaction to the recession would happen—budgets
would be slashed across the board and companies would look at
marketing as if it were a line item that must be removed immediately.”
When marketers in the CMO Council survey were asked which
media elements would see their budgets increased by more than
5%, 33% of respondents cited interactive/Web, 25% indicated
search marketing and 23% named social media.
“There is an increase in those programs and
media options that will have an ROI that can
be measured and provide direct engagement
with customers.” —Liz Miller,VP of programs and
operations, CMO Council, in BtoB magazine,April 6, 2009
Where Is Digital on the Accountability Front?
The marketing accountability mandate extends to every form of
media, including the Internet. But while the Web, in general, is
perceived as highly accountable, the actual usage and success of
measurement programs depends heavily on marketers’ objectives.
Most marketers have a handle on measuring and calculating ROI
for their search campaigns, which tend to be focused on shortterm,
direct response results. Far fewer have mastered the art
(and science) of assessing the impact of their branding efforts,
which tend to have a longer-term focus and are much harder and
more complex to measure.
But the industry is gradually waking up to the fact that marketers and
their agencies have been overemphasizing search while
simultaneously devaluing their online branding efforts—largely
because of inadequate measurement tools and platforms. In the
aggregate, branding-oriented ads today account for slightly less than
one-third (31.5%) of total online advertising dollars spent in the US.
® Online
“I think if we came to an agreement on how a
brand campaign influences a direct
response campaign and understood how
display advertising impacts search, that
would be a game-changer. It would change
the way our clients buy online media.”
—Jeff Lanctot, chief strategy officer, Razorfish, in an
interview with eMarketer,April 28, 2009
“This recession is having a dislocation
impact. It is causing advertisers to look
more closely at the Internet because of the
cost savings they might have [versus] if
everything economically was fine. [The
Internet’s] growth is slowing, [but] it’s
gaining share.” —Gian Fulgoni, chairman and cofounder,
comScore, in an interview with eMarketer,April
15, 2009
Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. conducted a study in June 2008 and
found that only 20% of marketing executives worldwide claimed to
use quantitative analytical techniques to optimize their online
marketing efforts. Most used subjective—or gut—measures.
In a more recent November 2008 survey by integrated marketing
solutions provider Alterian, 47% of the 1,545 marketers and
agencies polled said they used analytics to measure their online
campaigns. Despite the obvious vested interest here, the Alterian
survey suggests a positive trend for marketer adoption of analytics.
More evidence that progress is being made for measuring the ROI
of online advertising comes from a series of surveys among
marketers conducted by PROMO magazine between 2007 and
2009. In 2009, the Internet was deemed more profitable on an ROI
basis than traditional media by 34% of respondents—up from
21.6% in 2008 and 25.9% in 2007; only 7.4% felt the Internet was
less profitable than traditional media in 2009.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 9

Background: Factors that Contribute to the Measurement Issue
Interactive vs. Traditional Marketing ROI According to
US Marketers, 2007-2009 (% of respondents)
More profitable
Equally profitable
Less profitable
8.4%
4.7%
7.4%
Do not measure
Do not know
103776
Looking specifically at the data analytics side, Forrester Research
reported in May 2009 that over the next five years, US companies
will more than double their aggregate spending on Web analytics,
including data analysis of advertising campaign performance. The
research firm sees such spending growing from $421 million in
2009 to $953 million by 2014.
“It’s sort of a chicken or egg problem in that
measurement is expensive so it’s prudent to
measure only big campaigns on major
initiatives. So until more money’s spent
online for branding, the measurement’s
going to lag. If the measurement and metrics
lag, how can we expect the offline dollars to
pour in?” —Jeff Lanctot, chief strategy officer, Razorfish,
in an interview with eMarketer,April 28, 2009
® Online
16.0%
11.5%
13.9%
10.1%
9.0%
Does not apply
7.6%
10.1%
7.0%
14.4%
21.6%
25.9%
27.8%
28.7%
34.0%
39.2%
2007 2008 2009
Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding
Source: PROMO magazine, "2009 Promo Interactive Marketing Survey"
conducted by Penton Research, April 1, 2009
103776 www.eMarketer.com
What Spending Trends Say About
Online Brand Measurement
Spending trends by advertisers tell another side
of the story about the state of online branding
and its measurement.
Total Online Spending—Slow but Positive
Growth Ahead
Like in every other media category, growth in online advertising
spending is slowing. However, while traditional media—television,
radio, magazines and (especially) newspapers—are experiencing
cataclysmic, double-digit declines, Internet spending is slowing
from a growth rate of more than 25% to about 4.5%. In fact,
eMarketer sees online spending growth remaining positive
throughout the duration of this recession. By year-end 2009, online
ad spending will be just under the $25 billion mark.
US Online Advertising Spending Growth, 2007-2013 (%
change)
2007 25.6%
2008 10.6%
2009 4.5%
2010 9.4%
2011 10.8%
2012 13.5%
2013 10.4%
Source: eMarketer, April 2009
102197 www.eMarketer.com
102197
For additional information on the above chart, see Endnote
102197 | 104363 | 104366 in the Endnotes section.
eMarketer’s projection of 4.5% growth for US online advertising in
2009 is supported by a wide variety of independent sources, from
media and research firms to investment banks. Although a few
sources point to marginal declines, most predict online ad
spending growth will remain positive.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 10

What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand Measurement
Comparative Estimates: US Online Advertising
Spending Growth, 2009 (% change*)
-6.0%
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Endnote 104394 in the Endnotes section.
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-2.0%
-5.0%
-0.5%
LiveRail, September 2008
JupiterResearch, December 2008
BMO Capital Markets, October 2008
Wachovia, October 2008
ZenithOptimedia, April 2009
3.0%
2.3%
2.1%
1.5%
5.0%
5.0%
4.5%
4.3%
6.2%
7.4%
7.2%
Jefferies & Company, February 2009
1.0%
Credit Suisse, February 2009
0.1%
10.0%
13.0%
Borrell Associates Inc., November 2008
SNL Kagan, May 2009
Collins Stewart LLC, May 2009
GroupM, March 2009
eMarketer, April 2009
Citi Investment Research, January 2009
ThinkPanmure LLC, October 2008
Barclays Capital, May 2009
Morgan Stanley, March 2009
Thomas Weisel Partners, March 2009
Myers Publishing LLC, May 2009
Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., February 2009
UBS, February 2009
Cowen and Co., May 2009
14.8%
19.4%
Note: *vs. prior year
Source: eMarketer, April 2009; various, as noted, 2008 & 2009
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As an early indicator of how these full-year 2009 projections are
playing out, the IAB reported in June that online ad spending was
down by 5% in Q1. eMarketer benchmarks its future projections
on IAB reports, which are conducted by accounting firm
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Notably, eMarketer predicts a
slight uptick in online ad spending growth during the second half
of 2009.
Surveys among marketers—the ones spending the money—
confirm this online growth trend. In an Advertiser Perceptions
study among 1,599 advertisers and agencies, conducted in April
2009, just over one-half (51%) said they were increasing their
online budgets over the next six months. While that is positive, it is
down from 72% just one year ago.
Particularly in this harsh economic environment, any increases in
online advertising spending will likely come at the expense of
traditional media budgets. In a worldwide study by McKinsey in
June 2008, a majority of marketers (55%) said they were cutting
their traditional media budgets precisely in order to fund more
digital efforts. Several even more recent surveys corroborate this
migration from traditional to digital.
But not all ad formats in the online sector are trending in the same
direction. Spending on display ads, which usually serve a
marketer’s longer-term branding objectives, is headed downward.
Conversely, spending on search, which is usually considered a
direct response vehicle designed to achieve immediate results, is
holding steady.
Search versus Display Trends
By year-end 2008, search had grown to account for fully 45% of all
online advertising spending in the US. The current economic
climate will only accelerate this trend, with the result that
marketers will spend nearly 49% of their online budgets on
search—primarily for its direct response capabilities. Static display
advertising, on the other hand, will see its share slip from 20.8% of
online ad dollars in 2008 to 19% this year.
US Online Display and Search Advertising Spending
Share, 2008-2013 (% of total)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Search* 45.0% 48.8% 50.5% 50.4% 49.4% 49.3%
Display ads** 20.8% 19.0% 18.0% 17.0% 16.1% 14.9%
Note: *paid listings, contextual text links and paid inclusion; **banner ads
only, excludes rich media and video
Source: eMarketer, April 2009
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For additional information on the above chart, see
Endnote 104597 | 104600 in the Endnotes section.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 11

What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand Measurement
In terms of dollars spent, search advertising will grow 13.4% in
2009, while display ads will shrink by 4.6%.
US Online Display and Search Advertising Spending
Growth, 2008-2013 (% change)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Search* 19.8% 13.4% 13.2% 10.6% 11.2% 10.2%
Display ads** 9.4% -4.6% 3.6% 4.4% 7.8% 2.2%
Note: *paid listings, contextual text links and paid inclusion; **banner ads
only, excludes rich media and video
Source: eMarketer, April 2009
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For additional information on the above chart, see
Endnote 104597 | 104600 in the Endnotes section.
After the downward blip in 2009, display ad spending growth will
enter positive territory again in 2010, but at a rate of only 3.6%,
while search will climb 13.2%.
Over the next several years, display ads as a percent of total
online advertising will shrink from 19% in 2009 to just below 15%
in 2013. Other researchers and analyst firms forecast a similar
downward trend.
® Online
More Evidence that Display Ad Spending Will Shrink
eMarketer is not alone in thinking 2009 will see search budgets
continue to ascend while spending growth on display ads
goes negative.
In the comparative estimates chart below, every single research
firm, investment bank and media house predicts a positive trend
for search ad dollars this year, with a range of 1% growth (Cowen
and Co., Myers Publishing) to 21% (BMO Capital Markets). On the
other hand, there is a consensus that display spending will see
negative growth. Investment bank Oppenheimer & Co. is the
most pessimistic, projecting display ad spending will tumble 15%
this year.
Comparative Estimates: US Online Display and Search
Advertising Spending Growth, 2009 (% change*)
Online
display
Search
Barclays Capital, May 2009 -1.0% 10.0%
BMO Capital Markets, October 2008 -2.0% 21.0%
Citi Investment Research, November 2008 -5.0% 14.0%
Collins Stewart, November 2008 3.0% 13.0%
Cowen and Company, May 2009 - 1.0%
Credit Suisse, January 2009 -5.9% 8.1%
eMarketer, April 2009 -4.6% 13.4%
Forrester Research, April 2009 1.7% 13.9%
JPMorgan, January 2009 6.3% 9.9%
Myers Publishing LLC, May 2009 -3.0% 1.0%
Oppenheimer & Co., February 2009 -15.0% 10.0%
SNL Kagan, May 2009 4.6% 9.1%
ThinkPanmure, October 2008 -5.0% 13.0%
ZenithOptimedia, April 2009
Note: *vs. prior year
-1.8% 9.0%
Source: eMarketer, April 2009; various, as noted, 2008 & 2009
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Endnote 104573 in the Endnotes section.
“It’s time we woke up and faced reality.
Online display-ad spending will fall in 2009,
probably sharply.” —Henry Blodget, CEO, Silicon Alley
Insider, October 20, 2008
Quarterly reports offered by Nielsen and TNS provide an early look
at how these display spending projections are coming along. For
Q1 2009, however, the sources provide opposite views: Nielsen
Co. says display ad spending was down 3.5%, while TNS Media
Intelligence reports it was up 8.2%.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 12

What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand Measurement
The reason for the disparity is that each firm is measuring a
different thing. Specifically, Nielsen, which reported a 3.5% drop in
display ad spending, only counts CPM-based display spending.
TNS Media Intelligence, on the other hand, which reported an 8.2%
increase, includes both CPM and cost-per-action/cost-per-click
deals. We can conclude two things from this data:
1. Online display ad spending continues to increase.
2. Advertisers are shifting from CPM deals to pay-for-performance.
Surveys of marketers and ad agencies tell the same negative
story. For example, in a January 2009 AdMedia Partners survey of
marketers worldwide, 76% expected to increase their search
spending in 2009, with only 7% planning a decrease. In contrast,
only 26% saw increases for display advertising, while 45% were
predicting a decline.
Change in Online Marketing Spending in 2009
According to Senior Marketing Executives Worldwide
(% of respondents)
Increase Flat Decrease
Word-of-mouth/social media marketing 77% 12% 11%
Search marketing 76% 18% 7%
Mobile marketing 75% 14% 11%
Behavioral/contextual marketing 70% 22% 7%
Lead generation 63% 29% 9%
CRM/analytics 60% 31% 9%
Video advertising 60% 24% 16%
E-mail marketing 58% 31% 11%
Online gaming/in-game advertising 51% 30% 18%
Online media buying/planning 47% 40% 13%
Affiliate marketing 46% 35% 19%
Web development 39% 38% 23%
Market research 27% 50% 23%
Display advertising 26% 29% 45%
Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding
Source: Ad Media Partners, "2009 Merger and Acquisition Prospects for
Advertising, Marketing Services and Interactive Firms," January 28, 2009
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One upside indicator on display ads comes from the world’s
largest spender on advertising, Procter & Gamble. According to
the June 8, 2009, issue of Advertising Age, P&G decreased its
measured media spending by 18% in Q1 2009 but more than
doubled its spending on online display ads, as measured by TNS.
Similarly, P&G’s rival Johnson & Johnson nearly doubled its
spending on Internet display ads in the same quarter. Both
increases, though, were from very small bases.
It is also instructive to look at how marketers are using display ads.
According to AdRelevance, which measures impressions by
objective, advertisers have been slightly increasing their use of
display ads as a means to achieve direct response objectives, with
73% of impressions focused on direct response in Q4 2008. At the
beginning of 2008, only 68% of display impressions were directresponse-focused.
Online Brand Measurement: Special Report 13
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“So much of the investment that has been
made online has been very much tied to
direct marketing campaigns. The dollar
investment made in search alone is
representative of that.” —Pam Horan, president,
Online Publishers Association (OPA), in an interview with
eMarketer,April 27, 2009

What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand Measurement
Dollar Trends Don’t Tell the Whole Story
Just because the analysts predict negative growth for online
display advertising and most advertisers give it short shrift in their
marketing efforts does not mean that display ads necessarily
deserve the bad rep.
In fact, a pullback or complete retrenchment from display
advertising could end up being a big mistake for marketers.
There are four interrelated factors impeding the growth of online
display ad spending:
■ A depressed economy, along with severely reduced media
budgets overall
■ Intense pressure on pricing for display units, which, in turn, is a
function of both the economy and the proliferation of ad
networks (more than 400 at last count), which tend to
commoditize pricing
■ A lack of adequate measurement systems to justify the use of
display ads
■ A tendency for marketers, in the context of draconian budget
cutbacks, to focus their marketing efforts on below-the-line,
direct response initiatives
The last factor represents a familiar pattern for marketers. As
Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the IAB, said on his clog (a cross
between a blog and a column): “It’s an axiom of marketing that
when the economy gets rough, marketers shift budgets from
above-the-line programs to below-the-line—that is, they trade off
longer-term effects of brand-building for the shorter-term need to
move product.”
This thinking was echoed by the results of an April 2009 survey
among 129 marketers conducted by the Association of National
Advertisers (ANA). In the study, two-thirds of marketers said they
had shifted their focus to more short-term strategies over the past
six months in response to the economy.
Pricing Pressures
Online display ads are typically sold on a cost-per-thousand (CPM)
impression basis. According to Credit Suisse, online display ad
CPMs are headed downward for the next several years, projected
to fall from an average of $2.46 in 2008 to $2.30 by 2013, resulting
in a cumulative decrease of 6.5%. Note that these prices are
representative of traditional banner ads. Online video ads, for
example, typically garner a CPM of $15 or higher.
® Online
“Ad networks have driven CPMs down to a
terrible level.” —David Verklin, CEO, Canoe Ventures,
as quoted in MediaPost’s OnlineMediaDaily,April 29, 2009
At $2.46 in 2008, average online CPMs were less expensive than
every form of traditional media, with the exception of outdoor,
according to Jefferies & Co.
US Advertising CPM, by Media, 2008
Broadcast TV $10.25
Syndication TV $8.77
Magazines $6.98
Cable TV $5.99
Newspapers $5.50
Radio $4.54
Outdoor $2.26
Source: Jefferies & Company, Media Dynamics, InterMedia Dimensions and
company reports, "Snapshot of the Global Media Landscape," provided to
eMarketer, February 2009
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“Two elements working in online display
advertising’s favor are that its tracking
capabilities have been improved and its
pricing made more reasonable.” —Nate Elliott,
principal analyst, Forrester Research, as quoted in BtoB
magazine,April 6, 2009
CPM pricing for display ads purchased through ad networks is also
on the decline. According to the Q4 2008 report from PubMatic,
display ads sold through ad networks decreased by 48% in that
quarter compared with Q4 2007. More recently, CPMs on ad
networks were estimated to be down by 20% to 30% in Q1 2009
from Q4 2008, as measured by the Rubicon Project.
Of course, this downward CPM trend may also create an
opportunity. Marketers can buy display ads relatively cheaply
now—at a time when budgets are particularly tight. For brand
marketers, this is a buyer’s market.
Not only are the lower CPMs on display ads creating potential
savings for advertisers, the decreased volume of display ads in the
aggregate is reducing the clutter of online ads. Many studies,
including one by Nielsen, report that having fewer ads per
Webpage results in significant increases in unaided recall.
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What Spending Trends Say About Online Brand Measurement
Beyond Banners: Other Online Formats Will Boost
Overall Branding Dollars
While traditional display ad units—mostly banners—currently
represent the bulk of brand-oriented ad dollars online, other forms
of online brand ads are growing at a much faster rate. In addition to
banner ads, totaling $4.7 billion in 2009, rich media and video ads
account for another $2.7 billion. Other forms of brand advertising—
mainly sponsorships—make up an additional $300 million, bringing
total online brand ad spending in 2009 to $7.7 billion.
US Online Advertising Spending, by Format and
Objective, 2008- 2013 (millions)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Display ads $4,877 $4,655 $4,824 $5,034 $5,426 $5,543
Video $734 $1,054 $1,501 $2,109 $3,134 $4,092
Rich media $1,642 $1,691 $1,849 $2,079 $2,359 $2,641
Sponsorships $387 $319 $348 $386 $438 $484
Branding total $7,640 $7,718 $8,522 $9,608 $11,357 $12,760
Search $10,546 $11,956 $13,534 $14,969 $16,648 $18,340
Classifieds $3,174 $2,671 $2,412 $2,554 $2,831 $2,976
Lead generation $1,683 $1,764 $1,930 $2,138 $2,393 $2,604
E-mail $405 $392 $402 $431 $472 $521
Direct response $15,808 $16,783 $18,278 $20,092 $22,343 $24,440
total
Grand total $23,448 $24,500 $26,800 $29,700 $33,700 $37,200
Note: numbers may not add up to total due to rounding
Source: eMarketer, April 2009
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102197 | 104363 | 104366 in the Endnotes section.
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Importantly, when all the branding-related components
are combined, the aggregate dollars show a positive
growth rate for every year from 2009 though 2013. Total
online branding dollars will rise 1% in 2009 and 10.4% in 2010,
followed by double-digit increases thereafter.
US Online Advertising Spending Growth, by Format
and Objective, 2008-2013 (% change)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Video 126.5% 43.5% 42.5% 40.5% 48.6% 30.6%
Rich media -0.8% 3.0% 9.4% 12.4% 13.5% 12.0%
Sponsorships -39.2% -17.7% 9.4% 10.8% 13.5% 10.4%
Display ads 9.4% -4.6% 3.6% 4.4% 7.8% 2.2%
Branding total 8.0% 1.0% 10.4% 12.7% 18.2% 12.4%
E-mail -4.5% -3.2% 2.6% 7.1% 9.6% 10.4%
Search 19.8% 13.4% 13.2% 10.6% 11.2% 10.2%
Lead generation 6.3% 4.8% 9.4% 10.8% 11.9% 8.8%
Classifieds -4.4% -15.9% -9.7% 5.9% 10.8% 5.1%
Direct response total 11.8% 6.2% 8.9% 9.9% 11.2% 9.4%
Grand total 10.6% 4.5% 9.4% 10.8% 13.5% 10.4%
Source: eMarketer, April 2009
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102197 | 104363 | 104366 in the Endnotes section.
Video ad spending alone will climb at a 40%-plus growth rate for
the next few years.
A Special Note on Social Media Dollar Trends
While social media spending by US advertisers was on an upward
trajectory until the recession hit, eMarketer now predicts the market
for social network advertising will actually decrease by 3% in 2009.
The lack of measurement standards, or even a clear idea of what
and how to measure, is the primary factor inhibiting spending.
Surveys can be misleading, particularly if the results are
misinterpreted. If you poll advertisers, they will tell you that even in
the face of this recession, they are planning to boost their
spending on social media. In fact, several recent surveys, including
ones from Aberdeen Group, Millward Brown, Forrester and
MarketingSherpa, suggest that about one-half of advertisers or
more plan to increase their social media spending. But even if
these increases happen, they will be from very small bases.
According to Forrester, three-quarters of marketers looking to do
social media advertising have earmarked only $100,000 or less.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 15

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
What are the fundamental problems with online
brand measurement today? Ask a few dozen
experts—from agency executives and marketers
to representatives from the various trade
associations and research firms—and you will
likely get a few dozen answers.
eMarketer posed the question directly to experts in the field of
online measurement, and the responses were, predictably, all over
the map. And that fact alone—that the players can’t even agree on
where to begin—is the overarching problem. Fortunately, though,
a closer analysis reveals several common themes that indicate the
problems are so highly interrelated that solving one can solve
others at the same time.
Q&A: What is the single biggest problem with online
brand measurement today?
“In our marketing accountability survey, only about 33% of marketers
were satisfied with their marketing accountability and measurement
programs.We don’t have enough standardization or enough useful
marketing media mix intelligence and understanding. Studies and
research offer guidance, but marketers complain that by the time
they get the answers back, the media world has shifted and the mix
or model is no longer relevant.” Full Interview
“I think it’s really hard to create a panel of size and scale and a
technique to do surveys that aren’t interruptive. You can do
custom one-offs with one of the research companies that don’t
scale or are very focused on individual campaigns, but they don’t
tell the whole story.” Full Interview
® Online
Bob Liodice
President and Chief Executive Officer
Association of National Advertisers,
trade association
Curt Hecht
President
Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center
(includes Digitas, Starcom MediaVest
Group, ZenithOptimedia and Denuo)
Joe Laszlo
Director of Research
Interactive Advertising Bureau,
trade association
“There are two big problems: I’m hearing from our publisher
members that there is a kind of panel fatigue among people who
are asked to take online surveys that are quantifying brand
impact. Panel recruitment and response rates are issues. The
second is an assumption that the Internet is not good for
branding—there is a continued lack of awareness on the part of
marketers and agencies.” Full Interview
Michael Mendenhall
Chief Marketing Officer
Hewlett-Packard,
marketer
“Marketers monitor the front end and the back end so they see
clickstreams and commerce.The difficult part is the qualitative part
in between, which is the level of engagement.The challenge is to
begin to build technological capabilities that allow them to see the
complete digital footprint that a consumer leaves when they engage
with the brand and then be able to address that consumer in a
relevant way—behaviorally, contextually or both.” Full Interview
Young-Bean Song
Senior Director of Analytics & Atlas Institute
Microsoft Advertising,
Microsoft Corp.’s digital
marketing and media solutions provider
“I think it’s not having those foundational reach, frequency and GRP
metrics.You will never see P&G and Unilever spend more than
single digits (millions) unless we give them reach, frequency and
GRPs.Their entire business model is based on media mix models
where those are the inputs and the outputs.” Full Interview
A General Apathy Toward Branding
In this harsh economic environment, does branding even matter
to marketers?
“Branding is the hardest thing to justify, and everybody looks to
that budget first,” as Bob Thacker, the senior vice president for
marketing at OfficeMax, told Advertising Age in May 2009.
Any progress or advancements made in the field of online brand
measurement will be heavily dependent on the overall demand
for brand-oriented advertising.
Due to the economy and resultant short-term sales pressures
today, it appears branding will be taking a bit of a backseat to other
business priorities, at least according to most of the studies and
surveys eMarketer evaluated for this report.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 16

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
“However strongly you believe in your brand,
you have to do your bit to reduce spending
at tough times like these.” —Marty Ordman, vice
president, marketing and communications, Dole Food Co.,
speaking at the ANA Brand Conference, as cited in
Advertising Age, May 13, 2009
In the one clear exception to the rule, the ANA released results
from a “Brand Building in Tough Times and Beyond” study at its
May 2009 conference of the same name. In close alignment with
the theme of the conference, 74% of senior marketers responded
that “brand equity” is very important to their company’s success.
Yet a wealth of other survey data suggests otherwise—namely,
that brand-building will remain a low priority during the recession.
The ANA survey provides the first case in point. In its sampling of
129 marketers, two-thirds admitted that the recession had shifted
the focus of their companies to short-term results, as opposed to
the longer-term results associated with branding.
According to a recent MarketingProfs survey conducted among
670 marketers in October 2008, while more than one-quarter of
respondents identified customer acquisition (29.9%) and customer
retention (26.6%) as top goals, only 15.4% cited “creating
awareness for long-term brand-building” as a top priority.
Most Important Marketing Objective According to US
Marketers, October 2008 (% of respondents)
Acquire new customers not currently in the category
Customer retention (upsell, encourage repeat purchase)
Lead generation to support sales
Creating awareness for long-term brand building
15.4%
Taking customers away from competitors
7.0%
Note: n=670; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding
Source: MarketingProfs, "Impact of Economic Crisis," provided to
eMarketer, October 20, 2008
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21.3%
29.9%
26.6%
Similar results were found by Heidrick & Struggles in a December
2008 survey of US senior executives. Branding took sixth place
among their top priorities over the next 12 to 18 months.
Top Priorities in the Next 12-18 Months According to
US* Senior Executives, November-December 2008
(scale of 1-5**)
Acquire new customers 4.22
Increase customer retention 3.90
Increase customer lifetime value 3.74
Improve marketing ROI 3.64
Launch new products/services 3.59
Increase brand awareness 3.46
Improve marketing's impact on shareholder value 3.36
Acquire, develop and retain talent 3.31
Expand to new geographies 2.62
Note: n=111; *90% of respondents are US-based; **1=not important and
5=extremely important
Source: Heidrick & Struggles, "The Digital Marketing Standard," provided to
eMarketer, April 20, 2009
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Another survey, from Datran Media, shows that the marketers’
current focus on driving customer acquisition and retention at the
expense of brand-building goals (such as increasing brand
awareness or favorability) is not just a US trend. The survey,
conducted among 3,000 marketers worldwide, found that while
increased customer acquisition and retention were rated most
important by 63.2% and 43.7% of respondents, respectively, only
14.1% rated branding measures as highly.
Advertising Goals for 2009 According to Marketers
Worldwide, by Level of Importance (% of respondents)
Most Important Less Least
important
important important
New customer
acquisition
63.2% 32.7% 2.2% 2.6%
Increased brand
awareness
14.0% 48.7% 26.0% 11.3%
Increased brand
favorability
14.1% 48.7% 26.6% 11.4%
Increased
customer
retention
43.7% 43.7% 7.8% 5.6%
Note: n=3,000+; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding
Source: Datran Media, "3rd Annual Marketing & Media Survey," January 27,
2009
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Brand Measurement: Special Report 17

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
Similarly, in the context of interactive campaigns, Forbes
conducted a survey of 112 senior marketers primarily in the US in
early 2009 and found that direct response measurements were
significantly more popular than branding metrics as a gauge for
success. While 70% of all respondents identified conversions as
the leading measure of success and 49% mentioned click-through
rates, only 25% cited brand-building metrics.
Most Important Metrics for Measuring Online
Marketing Campaign Success According to US*
Senior-Level Marketing Executives, by Budget Size,
February-March 2009 (% of respondents)
$1 million+ All
(n=49) respondents
(n=112)
Conversions or sales
82% 70%
Registrations/subscriptions via organization's
Website
55% 52%
Click-throughs
51% 49%
Unique views to Website or page where ad or
content was placed
51% 37%
Boost in search rank
39% 34%
Downloads of data of information
33% 37%
Change in target audience awareness/
perceptions of brand
31% 25%
Customer feedback on Website
16% 26%
Number of target audience members reached 14% 13%
Streams of video or audio content
8%
6%
Other
6%
3%
Note: *respondents were primarily based in the US
Source: Forbes, "2009 Ad Effectiveness Survey," June 1, 2009
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The low ranking for branding is partly explained by a survey from
the ANA. In its October 2008 study, just when the financial crisis
began in earnest, marketers were asked to cite methods they
were using for measuring brand growth. Fully 70% said the answer
was “sales and net income,” which is about as blunt and bottomline
a measure as you can get.
Method Used to Measure Brand Growth According to
US Marketers, October 2008 (% of respondents)
Sales and net income 70%
Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding
Source: Association of National Advertisers (ANA) as cited in press release,
October 29, 2008
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Third-party brand equity valuations 15%
Shareholder value 9%
Household penetration 4%
Company culture 3%
Again, even though marketers appear to be temporarily retreating
from branding initiatives, including deploying and measuring
online brand campaigns, it does not mean that is the right thing to
do. Mr. Liodice, the CEO of the ANA, summed it up best: “It has
been demonstrated empirically, time and again, that stronger,
higher-valued brands lead to stronger, better business results.”
A Preoccupation with Search, at the Expense
of Branding
In the InsightExpress poll conducted for this report, 83.7% of
marketing professionals from a variety of disciplines and
companies agreed or strongly agreed with the following statement:
“Online search—because it’s so easily measured and is
often the last click before a purchase—is getting too
much credit. We therefore undervalue the branding
effects of online advertising formats such as banners,
interactive rich media and video.”
Only 16.2% of respondents were neutral, and not a single one
disagreed with the statement.
US Marketing Executives Who Agree that Online
Search Is Given Too Much Credit in Online Brand
Measurement, April 2009 (% of respondents)
Neutral
16.2%
Note: n=37; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding; no
respondents chose "disagree" or "strongly disagree"
Source: eMarketer, "Online Brand Measurement Survey" conducted by
InsightExpress, June 2009
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Brand Measurement: Special Report 18
Agree
43.2%
Strongly agree
40.5%

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
A few responses from the InsightExpress
poll explain why search gets too much
credit:
® Online
“It’s easy to measure the last click and attribute all
of the credit to search. It’s the perfect attribution
model for the lazy [marketer].”
“There is minimal branding and emotional
transference with SEM marketing. Search does very
little to complement a cross-platform marketing
plan. Branding through visuals is still paramount in
getting people excited, and for establishing an
emotional connection with a product.”
“Generally speaking, marketers attribute 100% of
transactional performance to search knowing that
other preference-building messaging leads the
consumer down the purchase pathway.”
Too many marketers are not even measuring their online branding
efforts.According to a May 2008 PROMO magazine survey of 148
US marketers (who subscribe to the magazine, which skews
toward direct response marketers), only 41.5% said they measured
metrics for online brand awareness.A much higher percentage
(58.5%) used the far less meaningful click-through metric.
Metrics Used by US Marketers to Measure Interactive
Campaign Effectiveness, 2007 & 2008 (% of
respondents)
2007 2008
Click-throughs 51.0% 58.5%
Incremental sales 41.1% 43.5%
Offer response rates 44.5% 42.9%
Brand awareness 36.5% 41.5%
Lead generation 40.7% 36.1%
Return-on-promo investment 34.2% 34.7%
Increased understanding of customer 26.6% 23.8%
Coupon redemption rates 16.3% 19.0%
Engagement with Web content 12.2% 16.3%
Media impressions 24.7% 16.3%
Improved sales margins 4.6% 4.9%
Don't measure * 2.0%
Does not apply
Note: *not asked in 2007
4.9% 2.7%
Source: PROMO magazine, "2008 Promo Interactive Marketing Survey"
conducted by Penton Research, May 2008
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A January 2008 survey by Sapient found similar results, with only
48% of marketers saying they measured online branding
campaigns; in contrast, 71% measured search and 82% measured
Website analytics.
Not surprisingly, brand marketers are frustrated. Having found
themselves in hot pursuit of direct response metrics, they are not
getting the answers to the most fundamental questions they have
about their online branding efforts.
Wenda Harris Millard, president of consultancy Media Link and
immediate past chair of the IAB, explained it this way in an
interview with eMarketer: “Brand marketers really want to know
who they’re reaching. We keep talking about impressions. They
[brand marketers] want classic demographics. Impressions are not
a substitute for knowing who you will reach. They also want to
know how long someone looked at an ad and what happened. Did
it leave a favorable impression of the brand? Will someone try this
product? And did somebody take an action at any point? They
want to create awareness and then know whether they changed a
consumer’s perception or induced trial.”
Ms. Millard, who previously held senior sales and media positions
at Yahoo! and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, continued,
“Brand marketers are frustrated about not getting answers to
those basic questions, so they end up looking at online as more of
a performance-oriented medium. The agencies, in many cases,
are using classic direct marketing metrics and trying to measure
brand impact using those metrics—but that doesn’t answer the
marketers’ real questions.”
Killer Stat for the Purchase Funnel: 94%
When a Microsoft Atlas Institute study examined the 90-day
timeline for a typical purchase funnel, it found that companies
often disregard 94% of the data available to them when assessing
online campaigns. The study also revealed that marketers
attribute far too much weight to activity occurring at the very
bottom of the sales funnel, concentrating heavily on the last ad
clicked, which often appears on a search engine.
Traditional AIDA Model Representing Consumer
Purchase Funnel
A wareness
I nterest
Desire
Action
Brand Measurement: Special Report 19

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
Commenting on the study, Esco Strong, senior group manager of
the Atlas Institute, said, “It’s a myopic view that disregards the
points at the top of the funnel that brought the consumers down
to the bottom.” Mr. Strong added, “You make someone aware at
the top of the funnel, target them with specific information in the
middle, and drive them to buy with search at the end.”
Not everyone in the industry is in agreement about where in the
funnel the most work needs to be done. Some, such as Curt Hecht,
president of VivaKi Nerve Center, believe the top of the sales
funnel is trickiest since it deals with attitudes. “Once you get into
real behavior around intent and helping clients come up with
proxies to show levels of interest, it’s the attitudinal metrics at the
top of the funnel that are harder to come up with,” said Mr. Hecht,
in an interview with eMarketer.
Others, such as Ken Mallon, senior vice president-custom solutions
and ad effectiveness consulting at Dynamic Logic, a firm that
measures brand metrics for online campaigns, think the ad industry
has got the top part of the funnel licked, but the bottom part—tying
intentions to end results—presents the biggest challenge.
“The hardest part is the last step, [measuring] what happens after
someone makes an intent to purchase,” said Mr. Mallon, in an
interview with eMarketer. “What happens after someone raises
their hand and says, ‘Yes, I do intend to go to that movie. I do
intend to buy that car in the next 90 days.’ How does intent
translate into actual purchase?”
Agreeing with Mr. Mallon is Jeff Lanctot, the chief strategy officer
of interactive agency Razorfish, who told eMarketer in an
interview: “[Our clients] see the opportunity to tie attitudinal
measures to behavioral measures, and that’s where the
complexity comes in. There’s value in measuring those tried-andtrue
attitudinal metrics but also in recognizing that there’s another
piece to the puzzle—actual behavior. Did consumers purchase?
Did they register? Did they take that end action? Digital yields
valuable insights and also creates incredible complexity.”
To make things even more complicated, some stakeholders even
question whether the standard sales funnel model is adequate to
represent the complexity in today’s digital world.
® Online
“We’re asking ourselves whether the funnel
construct is actually the right one. The
research we’ve seen shows that the
purchase decision process is far more
complex and nonlinear than a simple funnel.
[For example,] I don’t think we have a good
idea of how peer influence works in a funnel
construct. There’s been very little progress to
evaluate the impact of those [social]
conversations on brands.” —Jeff Lanctot, chief
strategy officer, Razorfish, in an interview with eMarketer,
April 28, 2009
Key Stat
According to the Atlas Institute, if marketers only look
at search, which is often the “last ad clicked,” they are
missing 94% of their engagement touchpoints.
“Some marketers are starting to use the
technology that manages online ad
campaigns (the ad-serving platform) to
assess the impact of all online touchpoints,
instead of basing the optimization of media
on the last click before a conversion.”
—Jacques Bughin,Amy Guggenheim Shenkan and Marc
Singer,The McKinsey Quarterly, October 2008
Clearly, if marketers are going to spend precious dollars executing
online branding campaigns, they ought to be measuring the
results—even if it costs a little extra in terms of time and effort.
Today, the tendency among online marketers is to measure only
search and give it most or all of the credit for online conversions.
They do this because search results, which often represent the
last ad clicked, are relatively easy to measure. But a wealth of data
suggests marketers should be applying much more rigorous
measurement analytics and integrating search and display results
to get the complete story on their campaigns.
Another factor is frequency. We all know that multiple messages
do a better a job convincing consumers to buy a product than a
single message. By exposing a given consumer to multiple display
messages, in addition to the search text ad they get after a search
inquiry, marketers are likely to improve conversion rates.
Numerous quantitative studies prove that when display ads are
combined with search, marketers can expect a significant
increase in sales conversions, whether those take place online or
offline. (See Data Spotlight section of report.)
Brand Measurement: Special Report 20

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
“The challenge is that people are applying
direct metrics in many cases to what is
inherently a branding campaign. We need to
continue to evolve the brand metrics in order
to make sure we are using the right metrics
to measure what the campaign objectives
are. But to simply use direct metrics to
measure brand campaign performance is
never going to be successful.” —Pam Horan,
president, Online Publishers Association, in an interview
with eMarketer,April 27, 2009
An Addiction to Clicks
Clicks represent the low-hanging fruit of measurement—and that is
why marketers tend to seek them out with a vengeance. But clicks
do not even begin to capture the full value of online display ads.
According to comScore, two-thirds of Internet users never click on
display ads over the course of a month; moreover, only 16% of
Internet users account for 80% of all clicks. That helps explains
why the average click-through rate for display ads has plummeted
over the years to a mere 0.1%. (Note that online video ads can still
elicit click-through rates in the 1% to 4% range, but that is likely to
taper off over time.)
“The majority of marketers are not actually
using the Web for brand advertising. They’re
using it for direct response and promotion.”
—Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO, Forbes.com, treasurer
of the OPA and chairman emeritus of the IAB, in an
interview with eMarketer,April 2009
A January 2009 study commissioned by iProspect and conducted
by Forrester Consulting shows that when Internet users were
exposed to a promotional ad, less than one-third (31%) of them
clicked on the ad itself; however, a plurality did take some other
form of action:
■ 27% searched for the product, brand or company using a
search engine.
■ 21% typed the Web address directly into their browser and
navigated to the advertiser’s site.
■ 9% investigated the product, brand or company through
social media.
Another 37% of respondents in the iProspect study claimed to be
completely nonresponsive to “any such ads.”
® Online
“If I don’t have a display campaign to support
my paid search campaign, I’m basically
giving the traffic away to my competitors.”
—Robert Murray, CEO, iProspect,“Search Engine
Marketing and Online Display Advertising Integration
Study,” May 2009
Overall, the iProspect study concluded that Internet users were
more likely to engage with or make a purchase from brands with
which they were already familiar, and online brand ads are one
way to get there.
Additional comScore research, conducted with Starcom USA,
reveals no correlation between display ad clicks and basic brand
metrics. In other words, if you look only at clicks, you’re
considering only a tiny fraction of the economic value of an online
advertising campaign. Study after study has shown that online
display ads generate awareness and interest—even if those ads
never get clicked.
Why have clicks become the default standard for online brand
measurement? Very simply, because they are so easy to measure.
Jim Meskauskas, vice present/director of online media at
Omnicom-owned ICON International, put it this way in an e-mail to
eMarketer: “Every client is a branding client, until they get their
first tracking report. Then they turn into direct marketers.”
Or, as Kathryn Koegel, former DoubleClick researcher and a
principal at media research consulting company Primary Impact,
wrote in her May 2009 “The State of Digital Display” white paper:
“We have built a parallel universe that does online little service to
its power for marketing and placed too much responsibility on a
click on a small graphic image, rather than the fundamentals of
media planning and creative.”
If there was one point on which all the professionals eMarketer
interviewed for this report could unanimously agree, it was that if
your goal is to build brands, clicks are the wrong way to go.
“Because of our direct response heritage [in
the online advertising industry], we’ve
toiled under the tyranny of the click for too
long.” —Randall Rothenberg, CEO, Interactive
Advertising Bureau, as quoted in Advertising Age,
March 30, 2009
Brand Measurement: Special Report 21

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
The Scourge of Clicks
If there are any lingering doubts about counting clicks, talk to Gian
Fulgoni, chairman of comScore.
In an interview with eMarketer, Mr. Fulgoni gave a clear and
impassioned argument for moving beyond the click-through as a
metric for online branding success. The problem arose, he said,
when the Internet was first evolving as an advertising medium.
The technology community at the time had “a very short-term
view of how advertising works that was direct-response-oriented,
not branding-oriented,” said Mr. Fulgoni.
Because the click-through rate was so easy to measure, it got the
industry into a direct response groove, which has in turn led to a
serious undervaluing of branding online.
“Let’s just accept that the click is not telling the whole [branding]
story,” said Mr. Fulgoni. “We don’t hold traditional media to that
same level of accountability. We don’t say you need to
immediately pick up a phone and call somebody if you see a TV ad
or if you’re listening to a radio ad or read something in a magazine.
Why should the Internet be measured by this immediate response
metric called the ‘click’?”
Mr. Fulgoni recently wrote a white paper entitled “How Online
Advertising Works: Whither the Click?” which culled data from
more than 200 studies and was published in the June 15, 2009,
issue of the Journal of Advertising Research. The white paper
concluded that an ad impression on the Internet works just like an
ad impression in traditional media.
According to Mr. Fulgoni, people who are exposed to a display ad—
whether or not they click on it—have “an increased likelihood of
visiting the Website of the brand in the ad, an increased likelihood
of conducting a trademark search query, an increased likelihood of
buying online, an increased likelihood of buying offline.”
“[The display ad] has a lasting effect,” concluded Mr. Fulgoni.
“Cumulatively, impressions build up over time and create an
image of a brand. Then when you go off and do a search, you’ve
got the brand better established in your mind.”
While direct response is attractive to marketers because of the
immediate gratification of almost-instant results, they must take a
longer view when measuring branding effects, which are
cumulative in nature.
Click-obsession leaves marketers with a very crude and
inadequate accounting measure that ignores most of the potential
value of an ad. They do not know if the ad created awareness in
the mind of the consumer, if it served as a reminder to buy the
product at a later time, if it created a more favorable impression of
the brand or reinforced loyalty to the brand. These attitudinal shifts
simply do not happen in the instant of a click.
® Online
Do Traditional Measurement Techniques Work for
New Media?
Having accepted the fact that clicks are not the answer, what about
adopting the measurement techniques of traditional media?
For years, those inside and outside the Internet ad industry have
debated whether standard offline metrics, most notably GRPs
(gross rating points), page impressions, reach and frequency,
should be applied to the digital space.
On one hand, many have said that the typical forms of
measurement for traditional media do not translate well online.
Nor do these metrics take into account the Internet’s unique
interactive qualities that allow for two-way communications with
consumers. In a word, they feel these forms of measurement are
inadequate, or even irrelevant.
Scott Knoll of Datran Media put it well in a recent iMedia
Connection article: “The models that have been in use up to this
point most resemble the proxy- and panel-based models of
broadcast [television] and fail to represent the very thing that
makes [the digital] industry different—its interactivity.”
“It’s like going to a 3-D movie without the
glasses. The Internet is more dimensional,
but [for the most part] measurement criteria
are the same as for a one-way medium. You
don’t have the glasses so you’re not
appreciating the dimensions.” —Matt Freeman,
CEO, Betawave, as quoted in AdWeek, March 23, 2009
Others argue that the power and possibilities of social media
programs that allow for deep consumer engagement are completely
ignored by traditional reach and frequency measurements.
But don’t write off traditional media measurements and metrics
just yet. There is a growing movement to support the application
of tried-and-true GRPs to Internet ad planning and measurement,
and this may well be a key to opening up the floodgates for more
media dollars and advertiser interest.
The key here is making online comparable to other media. “On the
one hand, you’ve got incredible [measurement] granularity on the
Web and a lot more insight into your brand metrics,” said Jim
Spanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com, in an interview with
eMarketer. “On the other hand, you really can’t compare that in
any way, shape or form to your offline spend.”
Brand Measurement: Special Report 22

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
Integration Is Hard When Data Is Locked in Silos
In eMarketer’s interviews with professionals who are experts in
the field of building models and processes for online brand
measurement, it was clear that unlocking data silos is a critical
step toward connecting the dots of media measurement. As
Razorfish’s Jeff Lanctot told eMarketer, “For all the talk about the
integration of traditional and digital media, they’re still bought in
isolation much more than they’re bought in integrated packages.”
“The single biggest issue advertisers are
dealing with is how to use online properly in
combination with other marketing
activities. To get there, we need data
integration and that’s the hard part.”
—Bob Barocci, president,Advertising Research
Foundation, in an interview with eMarketer,April 2009
In an interview with eMarketer, Cary Tilds of Mindshare-Team
Detroit said,“The current approach to planning media is what I
would call the buckets-of-money approach.You have a TV bucket, a
digital bucket, a search bucket, you might have an emerging [media]
bucket.You have buckets of money.The unspoken controversy is
about switching money from one bucket to another.”
Ms. Tilds added, “But the buckets of money approach has nothing
to do with how people consume media. A good media planner
needs to figure out how to allocate money against the consumer
journey—and that is a very complex problem. You have to identify
all the knowns and unknowns in the long string of mathematical
equations that we need in order to move from buckets of money
to consumer-centric planning.”
Further proof that data silos are a problem comes from
quantitative surveys. According to a November 2008 study by
JupiterResearch and Verse Group, 78% of US marketers agreed
that internal silos act as the biggest barrier to integrating
marketing. A related concern was “managing our brand across
multiple platforms.”
® Online
Attitudes of US Marketers Toward Marketing During
the Economic Crisis, November 2008 (% of
respondents who somewhat or strongly agree)
Due to the suffering economy, marketing efforts are under
greater scrutiny than ever before
Internal silos are the biggest barrier to integrating marketing
with customer experiences
78%
Note: n=101
Source: JupiterResearch and Verse Group, "A Shift in Marketing," provided
to eMarketer, December 7, 2008
100379 www.eMarketer.com
100379
A more recent study, conducted in March 2009 by TNS Media
Intelligence and sponsored by rich media provider Eyeblaster,
found that while 67% of senior marketers are now running crosschannel
campaigns, a scant 12% are integrating performance data
across channels.
When it comes to integrating digital and traditional media, too
many marketers feel as though they are operating in the dark. Two
separate surveys bear this out.
In the study by Heidrick & Struggles of 111 US senior marketers, a
paltry 15% of respondents claimed satisfaction with their
optimization of the marketing mix.
Another study, jointly conducted by the 4A’s and the ANA, found
that only 7% of US marketers said they were “very satisfied” with
their progress toward integrating online and traditional media.
Note: n=122 client-side marketers (members of ANA)
Source: Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 4A's and Bellwether
Leadership Research & Development, "Integrating Traditional and Digital
Media," provided to eMarketer, April 23, 2009
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Brand Measurement: Special Report 23
89%
Managing our brand across multiple platforms is a big challenge
for my organization
71%
Satisfaction Level of US Marketers with Their
Company's Progress in Integrating Traditional and
Digital Media, Q1 2009 (% of respondents)
Very satisfied 7%
Somewhat satisfied 52%
Neutral 10%
Somewhat dissatisfied 23%
Very dissatisfied 8%

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
Among the obstacles to integrating traditional and online media,
according to the joint 4A’s/ANA study, were the lack of metrics
and an insufficient understanding of digital media among
senior management.
Challenges of Integrating Traditional and Online
Media According to US Marketers, Q1 2009 (average
ranking*)
Having metrics to properly allocate the mix of traditional and
digital media
4.25
Key people at company lack understanding of digital media
103375
The top frustration among agency executives, on the other hand,
was that their clients do not fully understand how consumers use
digital media.
The study also identified challenges in measuring marketing ROI.
On a scale from 1 to 5 (where 5 represents “a major problem”), the
top challenges were data scattered across the organization (3.2),
difficulty allocating enough resources to do the work (3.2) and
inconsistent data formats (3.1).
In an interview with eMarketer, Michael Mendenhall, senior vice
president and chief marketing officer of Hewlett-Packard, had
much to say about the problems and solutions for data silos.
“Many marketers have disparate databases that don’t speak to
each other, so they don’t have a 360-degree view of a customer….
As you think about Fortune 500 companies that are selling across
a portfolio and selling brand experiences, it becomes very hard to
sell based on a portfolio approach without appropriate analytics.”
® Online
3.95
Reluctance to move funds from "tried and true" practices of the
past
3.89
Internal organizational silos impede a focused enterprisewide
approach
3.74
It is difficult to get multiple agencies to collaborate effectively
on integration
3.41
Note: n=122 client-side marketers (members of ANA); *on a scale of 0-5
where 0="no problem at all" and 5= "a major problem"
Source: Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 4A's and Bellwether
Leadership Research & Development, "Integrating Traditional and Digital
Media," provided to eMarketer, April 23, 2009
103375 www.eMarketer.com
He added, “The challenge for marketers is to begin to build
technological capabilities that allow you to see the complete
digital footprint a given customer leaves when they engage with
your brand. You need to be able to understand that behaviorally
and/or contextually and address that consumer in a relevant
way…. Where most marketers struggle is they do not have the
information technology capability and/or management to do that.
You need a sophisticated CRM platform that allows you to identify
somebody coming through search or display, and gets them to opt
in and [allows you to] start to manage them…. Marketers need the
ability to pull strategic information out of the digital footprints that
consumers are leaving.”
In an interview with eMarketer, Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice
president for digital operations of The New York Times Co.,
provided a publisher’s perspective on the online/offline data
integration problem. “The thing that I continue to hear over and
over again from people is, ‘Gee, I wish I had a way to tie my online
brand measures to my offline brand measures so that I could
standardize,’” he said. “If I’m spending X amount of money on
television and Y amount on the Web, wouldn’t it be great if I could
look at one set of metrics and determine whether the offline plus
the online were more powerful together, whether the online on its
own has efficacy and whether the offline without the online is
much weaker or not.”
Online Silos
Of course, data silos also exist within the interactive platform.
According to an iMedia Connection article by Scott Knoll, a vice
president at Datran Media, “The problem is not the existence of
the data. The problem resides in separate measurements for
search, display, email, video, and mobile, creating…‘data smog.’”
Kathryn Koegel, in her May 2009 white paper about the state of
online display ads, identifies intra-Internet silos as a major
obstacle to online advertising efficiency and success. “The silo-ing
of media into online vs. offline, direct vs. branding, search vs.
display, behavioral vs. contextual, undercuts the creation of media
plans that address actual consumer purchase processes in the
most efficient manner,” she wrote.
Too Much Information, Too Much Complexity
Another major obstacle to online brand measurement is the sheer
tonnage of data to be extracted, filtered and integrated—as well
as the mind-numbing complexity that data creates.
“The problem with online is we have too
much data, actually.” —Jon Gibs, vice presidentmedia
analytics, Nielsen Online, in an interview with
eMarketer,April 17, 2009
Brand Measurement: Special Report 24

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
While the Internet offers an abundance of possible metrics, that
very same plenty creates complexity and confusion. It is relatively
simple and straightforward when the objective is direct response.
The desired behavior is not only easy to measure, it is often nearinstant.
The consumer sees the direct response ad, follows
through with the call to action, and the marketer can quickly and
easily measure the results.
“Every day that I read about a new
technology…I get worried…. The scary thing
is how complex [digital advertising] can be.”
—Mark Addicks, senior vice president and chief marketing
officer, General Mills, in an interview with eMarketer,
May 4, 2009
When branding is the objective, though, the whole measurement
process is much more complex. First, the intended result—a
change in feeling, perception or attitude—is harder to measure.
Second, the impact of brand-building occurs over a period of time,
often weeks, months or even years. Third, there are far more dots
that need to be connected.
“Branding is a longer-term proposition. It’s
not about recalling a specific ad you saw 5
seconds ago. It’s about whether people feel
better about a brand or not.” —Young-Bean
Song, senior director of analytics and Atlas Institute,
Microsoft Advertising, in an interview with eMarketer,
April 16, 2009
This brand measurement complexity problem is not unique to the
online space, though the Internet adds another layer or two of
complexity with its interactive properties.
But it is essential to integrate online data with data from other
media, because branding campaigns are clearly most successful
when message exposures come from multiple media—a mixture
of television spots, a magazine ad, targeted banner and online
video ads, an outdoor billboard, an e-mail promotion and so forth.
“How can you possibly isolate the effect of
any particular piece of communication? All
of the problems that exist in measuring
advertising and marketing efficacy exist in
every environment—offline and online.”
—Amy Fuller, group executive, worldwide consumer
marketing/global products & solutions, MasterCard
Worldwide, in an interview with eMarketer,April 28, 2009
® Online
Additional complexity comes from the fact that research and
measurement firms have widely differing approaches and
methodologies, resulting in wildly varied results. As Mr. Lanctot of
Razorfish noted, “For a brand marketer, when there’s such a
disparity in what would appear to be the most basic of metrics, it
plants a seed of doubt about the reliability of the data sets or the
measurement program as a whole.”
Current Measurement Models Have Limitations
None of the prevailing techniques for measuring online branding
impact today are without flaws.
“Every type of measurement method, be
it online media research, TV media
research…has some level of error
associated with it. There’s [no] magic
bullet out there.” —Jon Gibs, vice president, media
analytics, Nielsen Online, in an interview with eMarketer,
April 17, 2009
Site Intercept/Brand Impact Studies
Although widely popular with advertisers, the use of site
intercept/brand impact ad effectiveness studies, such as those
conducted by Dynamic Logic or InsightExpress, is expensive when
multiple studies are run and do not tell the whole branding story.
Relying on the control versus test group approach, they work well for
measuring the brand impact of a specific ad or campaign, but lack
scale and do not take into account the longer-term effects of brand
advertising unless they are run repeatedly over multiple campaigns.
In addition, the heavy use of such surveys has led to consumer
survey fatigue, where the same individuals are polled over and
over. This can result in respondents who are not representative of
the population being measured. Some, too, question the intercept
method itself, since interrupting people with surveys while they
are surfing can lead to somewhat artificial results.
Mr. Hecht of VivaKi, in an interview with eMarketer, pointed out
some of the pitfalls of these intercept measurement techniques.
When asked what the single biggest problem is with online brand
measurement today, Mr. Hecht replied: “It’s the problem of doing
either custom one-off research which doesn’t scale, or doing
studies focused on individual campaigns which don’t give you the
whole story. It’s really hard to go out there and create a panel of
size, or create a technique to do surveys that are not interruptive
and that are useful. I’m not seeing a lot of innovation in terms of a
company stepping into that void to provide the kind of research
and tools needed.”
Brand Measurement: Special Report 25

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
Mr. Hecht added,“The market’s at the pressure point, in a good way,
and it’s going to force innovation and solutions to come forward.”
Another problem with the intercept survey method is that it is not
very good at measuring multiple forms of online ad messages. Joe
Laszlo, director of research at the IAB, said, “One thing…that’s
lacking is a way to assess the effectiveness of your campaign if it
runs across a broad swath of the Internet. For example, if it runs
across 15 different sites and in conjunction with a search engine
campaign, plus some social media.”
Panel Measurement Systems
The alternative to brand intercept studies is panel measurement
systems, such as those deployed by comScore and Nielsen. While
this technique has the ability to measure actual surfing behavior, it
has its own limitations. Panels are best for measuring Website
traffic and are less effective for measuring ad campaigns that may
run across dozens or hundreds of sites. They also tend to miss or
undercount smaller, long-tail sites.
In addition, there are the long-standing concerns about
conflicting data:
■ The individual panel measurement firms often show widely
differing numbers, such as for site traffic reach or audience size.
■ The numbers obtained from site-server logs are often
contradicted by any given panel measurement firm, causing
frustration and confusion.
Measurement of Social and Video Are Even
Further Behind
While the widespread use of social and video sites by consumers
evokes excitement (and sometimes a little fear) among
advertisers, the measurement of advertising in these
environments is vastly underdeveloped. Most advertisers are still
trying to understand the nature of this consumer activity and how
it might translate into appropriate advertising messages, let alone
how to measure campaigns in these environments.
® Online
Social Media
In a study by the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG)
of 126 US marketing executives, more than one-third of
respondents admitted they did not even measure social media
activities. One-half claimed to measure raw traffic and one-third
measured clicks, both of which represent crude metrics, even by
Internet standards.
Ways that US Marketing Executives Measure the
Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing Efforts,
October 2008 (% of respondents)
Incremental visits or unique visitors to Website
Note: n=126
Source: Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), "Social Media in
Marketing" as cited in press release, November 6, 2008
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A full 59% of respondents said they never or hardly ever measured
the ROI of social media marketing efforts. Only a little over 12% did
so all or most of the time.
The primary reason so few measure social campaigns is that it is
difficult—59% of marketers in a separate Aberdeen Group study
said social media was either “somewhat difficult” (39%) or “very
difficult” (20%) to measure. Note that the respondents here were
self-identified “best-in-class” companies. The survey also found
that only 18% of marketers link activities on social media sites
back to revenues or other financial metrics.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 26
Clicks
Conversion to leads/revenues
Page rank (e.g., Google)
25.4%
33.3%
31.7%
Buzz generated (as measured by BuzzMetrics or other
measurement service)
22.2%
Reputation metrics
18.3%
Ranking on social media metrics sites (e.g., Technorati)
14.3%
We don't measure social media activities
34.9%
50.0%

Drill Down: What Are the Problems?
Online Video Measurement: Promising, but Still
Early Days
Like social media, the online video advertising market is booming
with promise, but somewhat lagging in dollars.That is partly due to
a laundry list of measurement issues.A central issue, though, is the
tendency to focus on short-term, direct-response-type metrics that
ignore the primary branding-oriented benefits of video.
“The instinctual reaction to try and show the sales impact of video
campaigns is misguided,” said Mr. Song of Microsoft Advertising.
“We have studies that show that video, photo-sharing, weather
and social media placements look horrible in the online ROI
equation because they’re upper-funnel. People don’t see ads on
Facebook and then go buy something. Reach, frequency and
GRPs…need to be there upfront.”
However, the lack of transparency for video advertising metrics is
only one of several problems confronting the format, according to
2008 research from MarketingSherpa.
Worst Problems with Video Advertising According to
US Marketers, October-November 2008 (scale of 1-5*)
Clutter 4.1
Ad-skipping (DVR, TiVo) 3.7
Media pricing/cost 3.5
Lack of transparency in metrics 3.4
Lack of quality media inventory 2.9
Difficulty finding mass target 2.8
Difficulty in buying media 2.3
Note: n=1,083; *1=no problem and 5=big problem
Source: MarketingSherpa, "Video Marketing Survey," November 2008 as
cited in "Marketing With Video Report: Online, TV & Mobile," December
2008
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® Online
Data Spotlight: How Online Brand
Advertising Can Influence Every
Step Along the Consumer Purchase
Funnel
The Internet can have an impact at every phase
along the consumer purchase cycle, from
creating initial awareness and interest for a
product, service or brand, to stimulating
purchases, to delivering post-sales support and
reinforcing brand loyalty. But what about the
measurement of this impact?
As a crude indicator of how marketers generally value online
media, 36% of advertisers in a survey by Morgan Stanley said the
Internet was “effective”—considerably higher than for any other
media. It was not clear from the survey, though, whether
marketers were thinking primarily of search, display ads, their own
company Websites or other online tactics.
Effective Advertising Media According to US
Advertisers, 2009 (% of respondents)
Internet 36%
Newspapers/magazines 29%
Direct mail 26%
TV 22%
Radio 14%
Billboards 5%
Yellow pages 4%
Other 21%
Note: n=181
Source: Morgan Stanley, "2nd Annual Local Ad Survey & '09 US Advertising
Outlook," provided to eMarketer, March 31, 2009
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As validation, a more recent ANA study released in May 2009
found that while television was rated the most important media
channel in terms of effectiveness (64% of respondents), the
Internet was a close second (61%).
Brand Measurement: Special Report 27

Data Spotlight: How Online Brand Advertising Can Influence
Every Step Along the Consumer Purchase Funnel
How Display Ads Impact Brand Metrics
Dynamic Logic, InsightExpress and other survey firms have
conducted countless studies—covering all types of product
categories and services—to measure the brand impact of online
display and video advertising.
The latest aggregated data from Dynamic Logic, based on 2,380
campaigns measured through Q4 2008, found that those
respondents exposed to online advertising registered slightly
higher increases in key brand metrics, on average, than those who
were not exposed (that is, the control group). The delta lift
(expressed as a point difference) for exposure to online ads was
2.4 for aided brand awareness and 2.6 for message association.
Online Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics in the
US, Q4 2008* (% of respondents impacted)
Aided Online ad Message Brand Purchase
brand
awareness
awareness association favorability intent
Control 72% 25% 17% 42% 39%
Exposed 74% 30% 19% 44% 40%
Delta** 2.4 4.9 2.6 1.6 1.3
Note: n=2,380 campaigns and 3,889,602 respondents; *includes three
years through Q4 2008; **delta defined as point difference in exposed vs.
control groups
Source: Dynamic Logic provided to eMarketer, April 27, 2009
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For additional information on the above chart, see
Endnote 103522 in the Endnotes section.
But the above figures are based on across-the-board averages.
Importantly, the creativity and contextual relevance of ad
campaigns can heavily influence the results. When Dynamic Logic
dissected the data, top-performing campaigns boosted key brand
metrics by significantly higher levels than did the lowestperforming
campaigns.
For example, aided brand awareness increased 8.9% for topperforming
campaigns, versus only a 2.4% increase on average
and a drop of 2.3% for the lowest-performing campaigns. Similarly,
top campaigns pushed up purchase intent by 7.1%, versus only
1.3% on average.
® Online
Online Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics in the
US, by Level of Campaign Performance*, Q4 2008** (%
of respondents impacted)
Aided Online ad Message Brand Purchase
brand
awareness
awareness association favorability intent
Top 8.9% 14.0% 9.5% 7.5% 7.1%
Average 2.4% 4.9% 2.6% 1.6% 1.3%
Bottom -2.3% -1.6% -2.0% -3.5% -4.0%
Note: n=2,380 campaigns and 3,889,602 respondents; *best performers
are the average of the top 20% of campaigns per metric and worst
performers are the bottom 20% of campaigns; **includes three years
through Q4 2008
Source: Dynamic Logic provided to eMarketer, April 27, 2009
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For additional information on the above chart, see
Endnote 103523 in the Endnotes section.
Dynamic Logic also compared campaigns for different categories
of products and, again, found highly differentiated results. For
example, on the measure of boosting purchase intent,
entertainment, consumer packaged goods, home improvement
and telecommunications categories performed much better than
average, while apparel, restaurant and retail did relatively poorly.
When it comes to measuring the efficacy of display ads on
branding metrics, context appears to matter. According to a study
by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) and Dynamic Logic,
display ads within branded content sites (for example,
NewYorkTimes.com, Weather.com) do a better job of boosting
brand metrics than when those same ads are placed within more
generic portals or ad networks.
Interactive* Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics in
the US, by Site Category, January 2009 vs. August 2008
(% change in delta**)
Aided Online Message Brand Purchase
brand ad assocfavor- intent
awareawareiationabilitynessness Branded content sites
(OPA members)
63% 7% 8% 40% 0%
MarketNorms® database -11% -8% -10% -18% -13%
Portals
-9% -3% -6% -11% 0%
Ad networks
-21% -7% 0% -18% -40%
Note: *involves the audience without having them click through or leave
the Webpage; **delta defined as point difference in exposed vs. control
groups
Source: Online Publishers Association (OPA) and Dynamic Logic, "Improving
Ad Performance Online: The Impact of Advertising on Quality Content
Sites," January 8, 2009
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For additional information on the above chart, see
Endnote 102827 in the Endnotes section.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 28

Data Spotlight: How Online Brand Advertising Can Influence
Every Step Along the Consumer Purchase Funnel
Multiple studies prove, too, that online video ads can have an
outsize effect on standard brand metrics such as awareness,
message association and purchase intent.
Ways in Which US Marketers See Online Video
Enhancing Customer Engagement, 2008 (% of
respondents)
Increasing brand awareness 71.4%
Driving lead generation 47.2%
Enhancing loyalty/retention programs 44.7%
Converting customers 41.6%
Improving service and support 39.8%
Source: PermissionTV, "Online Video Survey Results," December 17, 2008
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Integrating Search and Display Ad Measurements
Intuition (and plenty of data) tells us that search works best when
it is complemented by online branding efforts that create
awareness, interest and desire among prospects.
First, as consumers ourselves, we realize that often the very idea of
searching for a particular product or brand comes from having seen
advertising. Second, when we are looking to possibly purchase
something and conduct a search inquiry, there is a natural tendency
to click on those search links that represent brand names we know
and trust, and to disregard unknown brands.
Most agree that online display ads can act as a stimulus for driving
searches for brands or products—which of course is a key step
leading to purchase.
“There’s an image, a perception, a value that [consumers] have at
the point that they conduct a search. You know, it’s not like
consumers are sitting there with no impression of a brand, until
they conduct a search,” said Gian Fulgoni of comScore.
“If you see a display ad, there’s an incremental impact, but it’s not
as great as the incremental impact of a search ad,” he added. “If
you combine the two, you get synergy and the combination is
greater than the sum.”
In an older yet still relevant study by the Microsoft-owned Atlas
Institute, 11 online advertisers were evaluated by measuring both
their display ads and sponsored search clicks. In the study, Internet
users exposed to both search and display ads converted at a much
higher rate than did those exposed to search or display alone.
® Online
Conversion Rate of US Internet Users Exposed to
Search Plus Display Advertising vs. Either Search Only
or Display Advertising Only, 2006 (lift vs. display click
only)
Display click only* 1.0x
Search click--no display impressions 3.3x
Search click plus display impressions 4.0x
Note: *baseline
Source: Atlas DMT, "Where Can You Find Your Customer? Try the
Intersection of Search and Display," July 21, 2006
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Similarly, a Specific Media survey found that online display ads can
boost search activity for many product categories, especially for
travel and tourism, health, personal finance, automotive, news and
media, and property and real estate; the average lift was 155%.
Impact of Online Display Ad Campaigns* on Search
Activity** in the US, by Advertiser Category,
September 2007-August 2008 (% lift)
Travel and tourism 274%
Health 260%
Personal finance 206%
Automotive 144%
News and media 144%
Property and real estate 125%
Retail 69%
CPG 22%
Average lift 155%
Note: *among Specific Media clients; **ad-exposed consumers who
searched on brand and/or segment-related terms vs. unexposed
consumers
Source: Specific Media as cited in press release, December 3, 2008
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In a January 27, 2009, interview with eMarketer, Beverly Thorne,
senior vice president of marketing at Century 21 Real Estate LLC,
explained the search/display connection for her brand as follows:
“Our own empirical results showed us that our online investments
were performing substantively better at generating leads. From
December 2007 to December 2008, we improved the efficiency of
our lead generation by reducing our cost per lead over 60%. At the
same time, we multiplied our number of leads by over 235%.”
The mastery of Web analytics plays a key role in tying display ads
to search results. According to analysis by Steve Kerho, VP of
analytics at Organic, display ads can increase a search ad’s clickthrough
rate by 25% to 30%. Until recently, though, this influence
of display ads has typically not been measured by advertisers.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 29

Data Spotlight: How Online Brand Advertising Can Influence
Every Step Along the Consumer Purchase Funnel
® Online
Spotlight: Alltel
When mobile carrier Alltel measured the sales
conversion impact of search clicks, display ads and
the synergy of the two, the “search click + display
ad” combination resulted in a 56% lift versus a
search click alone.
Source: Atlas Institute, Microsoft
How Display Ads Drive Site Traffic
Advertisers often have the goal of driving qualified traffic to their
corporate or brand Websites. Based on numerous independent
studies, display ads can help get this job done.
For example, comScore evaluated 139 studies linking display ads
to site visitation levels and found that the average lift in the
number of visitors to the advertiser’s site—comparing visitation
levels of exposed and nonexposed groups—was 65% during the
first week following the first exposure to an ad. Additional, though
somewhat muted, lifts were seen in the following three weeks.
Advertiser Site Visitation Among US Internet Users
Exposed to Online Display Ads, 2008
Control Test Lift
Week following first ad exposure 2.1% 3.5% 65.0%
Weeks 1-2 after first exposure 3.1% 4.8% 53.8%
Weeks 1-3 after first exposure 3.9% 5.8% 49.1%
Week 1-4 after first exposure
Note: home, work and university locations
4.5% 6.6% 45.7%
Source: comScore Brand Metrix, "How Online Advertising Works: Whither
the Click," December 5, 2008
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In another industry-specific example, a joint study by comScore
and analytics firm Crossix Solutions, in partnership with Yahoo!,
evaluated the ability of display ads to drive consumers to
pharmaceutical advertisers’ Websites. After seeing online display
ads, consumers were more than three times as likely to visit
pharma advertisers’ Websites and twice as likely to fill a new
prescription. In addition, exposed consumers were 92% more
likely to search for trademark names and phrases compared with
those who did not see the display ads.
The study was conducted among a base of 73 million consumers
and concluded that the display ad campaigns provided an
estimated return on media investment of 3X. Not a bad ROI.
How Display Ads Impact Online Sales
For most categories of products and services, consumers rely
heavily on the Internet to do research, or “window shop,” prior to
making the final purchase. Given this proclivity, marketers have an
obvious opportunity to influence the awareness, preferences or
even behaviors of these online shoppers—at the precise time
when they are in exploration or consideration mode. In the 90 days
leading up to a sale, consumers see an average of 18 ads for a
product, according to Microsoft’s Atlas Institute.
eMarketer estimates that 152 million people, or 86% of Internet
users ages 14 and older, shop or browse online for possible
purchases that may or may not occur online. Of course, the
tendency to shop on the Web varies by category. A worldwide
survey from Universal McCann indicates that
holidays/destinations, consumer electronics and travel are the
most-shopped categories online.
Products and Services that Active* Adult Internet
Users Worldwide Have Researched Online, 2008 (% of
respondents)
Holidays/destinations 61.9%
Consumer electronics (e.g., TVs, PCs) 58.4%
Travel (e.g., flights, trains) 56.9%
Portable devices (e.g., MP3 players, mobile phones) 56.6%
Mobile phone services 56.0%
Computer software 52.3%
Films 49.8%
Music 48.8%
Books 46.2%
Cars/automobiles 43.7%
Home appliances (e.g., refrigerators, freezers) 39.1%
Game consoles/gaming 36.9%
Fashion (e.g., clothing, shoes) 35.0%
Financial services (e.g., credit cards, banking, insurance) 31.1%
Property/real estate 29.7%
Cosmetics 27.5%
Personal care (e.g., medicines, contact lenses, etc.) 24.1%
Groceries (food) 18.7%
Utilities (e.g., gas, electricity, etc.) 16.1%
Groceries (nonfood e.g., cleaning products) 15.5%
Alcoholic beverages 12.3%
Nonalcoholic beverages 9.1%
Note: n=17,000 ages 16-54; *daily or every other day
Source: Universal McCann, "When Did We Start Trusting Strangers?,"
September 2008
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Brand Measurement: Special Report 30
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Data Spotlight: How Online Brand Advertising Can Influence
Every Step Along the Consumer Purchase Funnel
A study by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates found that US
online shoppers would research high-consideration products and
services, such as cars, computers, new doctors, vacations and
mobile phone plans, prior to making an actual purchase.
Products/Services that US Online Shoppers Would
Research Significantly Before Buying, October 2008 (%
of respondents)
Car 85%
New computer 83%
New doctor 83%
Vacation 75%
Mobile phone plan 72%
Vacuum cleaner 58%
Apartment 57%
Exercise plan 47%
Movie 43%
Children's toys 31%
Shampoo 22%
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But less expensive products are increasingly researched online as
well. According to Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst,
consumers today access the Internet to look up even relatively
low-interest products such as shampoo. Said Mr. Grau,
“Consumers might go to a shampoo manufacturer’s site to learn
whether a product contains paraben preservatives, or is tested on
animals or made from animal ingredients. They also might visit a
retailer’s site to read customer reviews to hear from others
whether a shampoo is really unscented or causes scalp irritation.
Consumers also go to coupon sites to get additional savings on a
shampoo purchase.”
Display/branding ads can also influence consumers to the point of
purchasing products online, though rarely is the impact in the form
of an immediate click.
In several studies, comScore evaluated the combined influences
of search and display ads on consumer online buying behavior.
Search, given its obvious indication of purchase intent (that is,
those who take the time to search for a product are usually inmarket),
has a stronger influence on consumer buying behavior
than display ads alone. But when both search and display ads are
combined, the overall impact is significantly greater than that of
either search or display ads individually.
® Online
Book to read for pleasure 32%
Note: n=300 ages 18+
Source: Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Inc. (PSB), "LinkShare
TrendWatch Research: New Info Shoppers, Recession Buyers, and the 2009
Online Shopping Outlook," January 30, 2009
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For example, while display ads alone provided a 42% lift (test
versus control) on the percentage of consumers making a retail
purchase online, and search generated a 121% lift, the combination
of search and display ads together produced a 173% lift. Further,
the one-two punch of search and display resulted in significantly
higher dollar spending per thousand consumers exposed.
Online Retail Sales* from US Internet Users Exposed
to Online Display and/or Search Ads, 2008
Control Test Lift
Display only $994 $1,263 27%
Search only $1,548 $2,724 76%
Search and display $2,723 $6,107 124%
Note: home, work and university locations; *monthly sales per thousand
exposed consumers ranging from two weeks to three months after the
initial exposure
Source: comScore Brand Metrix, "How Online Advertising Works: Whither
the Click," December 5, 2008
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Percent of US Internet Users Who Make an Online
Purchase on the Advertiser Site After Being Exposed
to Online Display and/or Search Ads, 2008
Control Test Lift
Display only 1.0% 1.5% 42%
Search only 1.1% 2.4% 121%
Search and display 1.9% 5.1% 173%
Note: home, work and university locations; retail sites only
Source: comScore Brand Metrix, "How Online Advertising Works: Whither
the Click," December 5, 2008
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How Display Ads Influence Offline Purchases
“The current lack of visibility into offline
purchasing [as a result of online display
advertising] consistently leads to dramatic
underestimation of display advertising ROI.”
—comScore white paper,“How Online Advertising Works:
Whither the Click?” December 2008
Unfortunately, while online advertising can have a substantial
impact on offline sales, most marketers fail to measure this
important connection.
According to McKinsey’s June 2008 digital advertising survey of
340 senior marketing executives worldwide, only 30% said they
even considered the offline impact of online marketing. However,
marketers that did look at those metrics were more satisfied with
their online efforts and said they planned to increase spending on
them by 38%.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 31

Data Spotlight: How Online Brand Advertising Can Influence
Every Step Along the Consumer Purchase Funnel
To be fair, integrated measurement systems are often difficult and
pricey—but in the long term, for marketers that measure search
and display advertising together, the results can be particularly
encouraging. A September 2008 comScore study found that by
using search and display ads in combination, marketers can
significantly boost the dollar value of offline retail sales versus
using either search or display only.
Incremental Impact on Offline Sales per Thousand US
Consumers Exposed to Search and Display Ads vs.
Search Only and Display Only, 2007-2008 (% lift)
Search and display 119%
Search only 82%
Note: n=137 tests from comScore Ad Effectiveness Database conducted in
2007 and 2008
Source: comScore, "Maximizing the ROI from Internet Advertising: Lessons
Learned," September 8, 2008, provided to eMarketer, October 2008
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As evidenced by a separate survey conducted by comScore
Networks and Yahoo!, the search/display combination of ad
messages increased in-store purchases significantly. In the study,
those online shoppers who had seen both ad types were 43%
more likely to be converted to in-store buyers. In comparison,
consumers who had seen only search ads were just 26% more
likely to be converted, while exposure to only display ads lifted
conversion by just 6%.
Source: comScore Networks Inc. and Yahoo!, "From Clicks to Bricks: The
Impact of Online Pre-Shopping on Consumer Shopping Behavior" as cited
in press release, July 30, 2007
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As a rule, the impact of online research/shopping behavior is
greater on in-store sales than Web-based sales. According to
comScore, for retailers with online and offline sales channels,
approximately 68% of the impact of display ads was found in the
offline channel.
® Online
Display only 16%
Effectiveness of Online Search and Display
Advertising Campaigns in Converting US Online
Researchers to In-Store Buyers, 2007 (% change in
conversions)
Consumers who saw a joint display and search campaign and
subsequently made an in-store purchase
43%
Consumers who saw a search campaign and subsequently made
an in-store purchase
26%
Consumers who saw a display campaign and subsequently made
an in-store purchase
6%
In the aggregate, Forrester estimates that in 2009,Web-influenced
or cross-channel store sales will reach $758.8 million, dwarfing the
sales transacted directly online. In other words, the Web’s influence
on sales is much greater than its direct e-commerce impact.
US Retail Sales, by Channel, 2007-2012 (millions)
Brand Measurement: Special Report 32
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
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$174,466
$204,018
$235,389
$267,791
$301,039
$334,742
$503,734
$629,228
$758,792
$886,232
$1,007,609
$1,120,709
$1,873,673
$1,793,624
$1,711,101
$1,633,282
$1,564,494
$1,498,978
Offline sales Cross-channel sales Online sales
Source: Forrester Research, "The New Rules of eCommerce," September
17, 2008
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Social Influence
Although there is only limited evidence at this point, a few studies
suggest that advertising in social media can affect offline sales, too.
A partnership research study involving comScore, dunnhumby
and MySpace was conducted to track offline purchases of Internet
users exposed to ads for a personal-care brand on MySpace. Of
the nearly 80 million people exposed to the campaign, fewer than
1% visited an advertiser page on MySpace, though about one-half
who did also visited the personal-care advertiser’s site.
Despite this small percentage of visitors, the campaign met its ROI
objective.According to Advertising Age (April 13, 2009),“[The
campaign] produced $1.28 million in offline sales, as measured by
dunnhumby, which compared purchases among shoppers not
exposed to the campaign with purchases among those who were.”
This resulted in an impressive 28% return on marketing investment.

Data Spotlight: How Online Brand Advertising Can Influence
Every Step Along the Consumer Purchase Funnel
In sum, marketers who fail to assess the cross-channel impact of
their online branding efforts—particularly in this economic
climate—are significantly underestimating their effectiveness.
Leading marketers are developing tracking mechanisms that allow
for comparisons between offline and digital marketing. And they
do not have to be complicated or expensive. For example, in order
to track sales across channels, retailers can use online coupons
that are redeemable on Websites and in stores.
“When you start to link in-store purchase behavior with online
advertising, it’s incredibly valuable,” said Mr. Lanctot of Razorfish.
“[It] can help marketers understand how online marketing drives
offline behavior.”
Three Factors for Online Branding Success
You can have all the precise numbers, measurement tools and
metrics at your disposal—and completely bomb with your
online campaign if your creative messaging is substandard or
badly targeted.
1. Don’t Ignore the Creative
Under the pressure of marketing accountability, and in our zeal to
quantitatively measure everything that moves, marketers must
not abandon creativity as an essential variable in online branding
success. Measurement tends to look backward like a rearview
mirror, while creativity seeks to shine the headlights on a future
attitude or action—on the part of the consumer marketers are
trying to reach and influence.
As Jon Gibs from Nielsen Online said, “Creative is about 70% to
80% of the effectiveness of advertising.”
“If your creative isn’t good, then you aren’t
going to create engagement.” —Jeff Marshall,
managing director, Pixel, a digital creative agency owned
by Publicis Groupe, as cited in The Wall Street Journal,
May 6, 2009
® Online
Ken Mallon of Dynamic Logic, whose company has evaluated the
brand impact of thousands of online campaigns, was very vocal
about the need for good creative: “By far the biggest driver of
brand impact success is the creative. The best ads that we see in
terms of performance online tend to be ones that almost have a
magazine feel. They look nice; people think about things like
having the right human form in there, the right product shot.”
Effective creative can be planned, according to Mr. Mallon.“We have
a set of 10 standard best practices.The clients that follow those do
really well. But most people violate one or more of those routinely,
and that’s why online advertising just isn’t that great on average.”
Some in the industry go so far as to say that the creative form of
online advertising is not only critical, it transcends the
measurement issue entirely. In eMarketer’s interview with online
publishing pioneer Martin Nisenholtz, it was clear that finding
ways to make online ads more emotionally evocative is
paramount to branding success.
“I don’t think the measurement issue is holding back brand dollars
online. The bigger concern is that the Web still hasn’t found a way
to create the kind of emotional involvement that television creates
for people,” said Mr. Nisenholtz. “I can pretty much promise you
that television didn’t evolve as a dominant brand-building medium
because somebody started with a measurement. It evolved
because marketers said to themselves, ‘This is an incredibly
powerful way for us to communicate and transmit the emotive
powers of branding.’ And then they figured out how to measure it.
In other words, measures are the tail, not the dog, and the dog
hasn’t yet been invented online. So we have to invent the dog.”
Also speaking from the online publisher’s side is Pam Horan,
president of the OPA, who feels there has not been enough focus
on the creative process and making online ads that engage with
consumers. “Creative is a big issue,” she said in an interview with
eMarketer. “At the OPA, we’re trying to spur a creative
renaissance, so to speak, to show the opportunity for online
advertising to deliver a rich experience, tell a unique story and a
brand-oriented message.”
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Data Spotlight: How Online Brand Advertising Can Influence
Every Step Along the Consumer Purchase Funnel
2. Size Matters
When it comes to banners and other forms of display ads, larger,
more intrusive ads tend to perform better than smaller ones, on
average. Dynamic Logic and InsightExpress studies have proved
this correlation.
The size and shape of display banner ads can also affect
engagement results, at least as measured by time spent.
According to a time-exposure study conducted by Lotame
Solutions, the large 300x250 rectangle caused Internet users to
spend significantly more time with this unit versus more narrow
(and creatively limiting) ads, specifically 728x90 and 160x600
banner ads. Consumers spent over 13 seconds with the rectangle
(300x250), more than double the next-best-performing ad unit, the
728x90. The large size and shape of these rectangles, which end
up smack in the middle of valued content, means they are difficult
to ignore.
Time Spent with Banner Ads Among US Internet
Users, by Ad Size, January-February 2009
Total
Total Average time
exposure time impressions
per
(seconds)
(millions) impression
(seconds)
300x250 867,700,956 66,466,701 13.05
728x90 161,590,364 29,925,805 5.40
160x600 97,539,062 51,938,746 1.88
Source: Lotame Solutions, Inc., "Time Exposure by Banner Size," provided
to eMarketer, April 8, 2009
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Taking such data into account, Web media publisher MSNBC.com,
for one, is launching a new Website design that features larger-size
ads, as well as exclusive sponsorship placements, to attract
budget-conscious advertisers.
Furthermore, as one in a series of solutions to the creative
challenge, the OPA recently released three new innovative online
ad units designed to create brand experiences—within the ads.
“The idea is to deliver the brand experience right on the pages of
these rich content sites [e.g., OPA publisher sites] so people won’t
have to click away,” said Ms. Horan.“These units are much larger….
The marketer’s share of voice increases because the consumer is
being exposed to a bigger ad for a longer period of time.”
® Online
3. Focus on Targeting and Relevance
The Internet, partly because it is so fragmented, allows marketers
much better opportunities to finely target their messages to the
right individuals, and often at the right time and place. The “spray
and pray” approach may have worked in the past for traditional
media campaigns, but it most certainly does not work on the Web,
where consumers almost expect ad messages to be more
relevant. We have the targeting technology, but we need to use it.
“Don’t count the people you reach, reach the
people that count.” —David Ogilvy, world-renowned
advertising executive
Studies from Dynamic Logic and InsightExpress, for example,
show that contextual placements, aligning brand messages that
are in sync with the surrounding editorial content, tend to be more
effective for highly targeted categories, such as autos, pet care,
baby and pharmaceutical products. Many other studies support
the ability of contextual placements to boost results. In that
regard, online is no different than other media.
Another targeting technology experiencing renewed interest
among advertisers is behavioral targeting.With behavioral targeting,
ads are served up to Internet users based on the past surfing
behavior of the individual consumer. Conceptually, this means that
advertisers are buying audience, not Webpages or impressions.
This is good for the advertiser, since it makes for a more efficient
media buy. It’s also good for the publishers, since they can sell
advertising space that might have gone unsold. And finally, it is
potentially good even for consumers, since they are more likely to
see ads that are relevant to their interests.
Because behavioral targeting has the potential to efficiently get
the “right” ads in front of presumed interested parties, much like
search ads, many in the industry see a resurgence coming in this
type of technique.
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Data Spotlight: How Online Brand Advertising Can Influence
Every Step Along the Consumer Purchase Funnel
“These improvements [behaviorally-targeted
banner ads], driven primarily by better
targeting, will also likely boost aggregate
spending, as advertisers moving online begin
to get the same tracking and metrics that
have made search advertising so appealing.”
—Ned May, director/lead analyst, Outsell, in BtoB magazine,
April 6, 2009
Forrester Research currently estimates that nearly one-quarter
(24%) of online campaigns rely on some form of behavioral
targeting data. This was substantiated by a February–March 2009
survey by Forbes.com, which reported that 31% of senior-level
marketers were using behavioral targeting. Finally, Datran Media
surveyed marketers and found that 65% either already used or
planned to use behavioral targeting in the future.
Of course, behavioral targeting, which relies on cookie technology,
has two serious obstacles:
■ Between 30% and 50% of Internet users regularly delete their
cookies, rendering behavioral targeting virtually useless for
these consumers.
■ Mounting privacy concerns could end up derailing the use of
behavioral targeting, or at least seriously limiting its impact.
® Online
Working Toward the Solutions for
Online Brand Measurement
Big Picture: Five Broad Approaches
After conducting 24 phone interviews, five video interviews,
several round-robin Q&As and an online survey among industry
movers-and-shakers—not to mention poring over reams of data
from studies and surveys—eMarketer sees the following five
broad approaches as key to moving forward on the online brand
measurement front:
1. The first critical step for marketers when developing any
measurement programs must be to identify their brand’s top
marketing objectives.
2. Keep in mind that there is no single measurement system that
does it all, nor will there be a silver bullet in the future.
“I don’t think the white knight is going to be
riding up on his little pony. It’s going to be
the industry working together.” —Pam Horan,
president, Online Publishers Association, in an interview
with eMarketer,April 27, 2009
3. A hybrid of traditional and digital approaches will be necessary,
which will require a dramatic reinvention of measurement as
we know it.
4. The Internet must be rolled up within existing media mix
models. There is a clarion call for the traditional metrics of
reach, frequency and GRPs to be integrated with the Web—but
this will only be the starting point, not the end game.
“There needs to be clear and broad industry
education so everybody understands
what’s happening.” —Bryan Wiener, CEO, 360i, in an
interview with eMarketer,April 2009
5. Connecting all the dots requires collaboration. Key industry
stakeholders will need to work closely together to create
seamless databases that talk to each other. One top priority:
continuously refining attribution models that assign
mathematical weights to the various digital footprints captured
along the consumer buying cycle.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 35

Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
This report represents only a starting point toward
igniting a broader, more collaborative coalition that
is dedicated to solving the online brand
measurement challenge. As such, it will be made far
stronger by the input, feedback and ideas from you,
the reader. Please take the time to share your
comments and thoughts. Collectively, we can begin
to connect the dots.
It All Starts with Marketing Objectives
You can measure many things online, but if metrics do not align
with business objectives, you will not go very far (and you’ll likely
drive yourself crazy).
In a survey by Spencer Stuart of senior-level marketers, the best
way to measure CMO effectiveness—beyond even profitability and
revenue measurement—was to make sure that “marketing is
aligned with the business strategy,” as cited by 35% of respondents.
Best Ways to Measure CMO Effectiveness According
to US Senior Marketing Leaders, 2008 (% of
respondents)
Marketing is aligned with the business strategy 35%
Profitability 29%
Revenue 25%
Note: n=200+
Source: Spencer Stuart, "Isolating the Marketing DNA: The Essential Skills
and Qualities of the New CMO," November 2008
102334 www.eMarketer.com
102334
“The most important factor is to have clearly
defined goals from the beginning. What are
you hoping to achieve? Focus on five or six
key metrics that serve as your guiding
measurement.” —Chris Thornton, chief marketing
officer, Definition 6, as quoted in Adweek, May 18, 2009
As Mr. Gibs of Nielsen Online stated at the Digital Publishing and
Advertising conference in New York on May 12, 2009, “Counting is
not the same thing as accountability.” When developing online
campaigns, one of the hardest challenges is to identify what
specific actions or behaviors you really want to elicit from your
consumer target, along with any emotional or qualitative levers
that enable them.
® Online
Perceived value of marketing 7%
Brand awareness 5%
Supporting the “primacy of objectives” movement is Ms. Horan of
the OPA, who told eMarketer in an interview: “It all comes back to
what the campaign goals are. If a marketer is looking for
engagement, they have to decide what engagement is. Is it the
number of views, is it a behavior post-view, is it a registration?...It
may be that they’re looking at engagement as hover time…. Or it
might be whether a person clicked on something within the ad.”
Brand advertisers are all trying to figure out how online
engagement can impact their brands, but the starting point is
pinpointing the brand’s core marketing objective.
This was the case with Amy Fuller, group executive, worldwide
consumer marketing/global products & solutions of MasterCard
Worldwide. In an interview with eMarketer, Ms. Fuller spoke of
engagement: “It really starts there—with asking, ‘What is brand
health?’ Is it brand opinion, is it willingness to recommend
something, is it willingness to pay a premium, is it being
mentioned in social networks, is it someone agreeing to receive
a MasterCard?”
She added: “Then, and only then, can we start figuring out, ‘OK,
if we’re happy with how we’re measuring engagement—which
means looking at qualified actions, not simply clicks—how do
we capture what effect that has on those eventual brand
health metrics?’”
Mr. Mendenhall of Hewlett-Packard put forward a similar
perspective in an interview with eMarketer. What brand marketers
are looking for, he said, is “very dependent on the strategy and
objectives for the specific product launch, service or promotion,
and those vary. It really depends on what I’m trying to accomplish.
Am I trying to achieve brand immersion, brand preference or
brand experience? Am I trying to generate a lead and then
manage the lead through to a sale? Am I trying to drive ecommerce
or build a lifetime relationship with a customer?”
Mr. Mendenhall also noted: “Then you think about how many
people come through your front door. How many of those people
stay? How long do they stay? Where do they go? What do they do?
If you have a good CRM capability that pulls those analytics, and
you look at the behavioral and contextual footprints, it all becomes
incredibly valuable to a marketer. These kinds of analytics become
a competitive differentiator.”
The Need for Uniform Standards
In television media, advertisers have simple, defined and relatively
limited choices for creative executions, such as the standard 15or
30-second spot. In radio, the standard is typically 30 or 60
seconds. Magazines offer full pages, half pages and a discrete
assortment of other choices. The measurement of offline media
has become somewhat standardized as well.
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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
The Nielsen ratings numbers for television, for example, are so
standardized they operate as the buying and selling currency for
the $70 billion TV business. Of course, few will admit that the
actual measurement process itself is less than perfect.
“People in broadcast sort of chuckle at the
Tower of Babel that we in digital provide by
way of data, as they all implicitly agree to
live and die on a ‘standard’ that everyone
knows is a proxy for a proxy, with branding
standards that are, well, imprecise.” —Mark
Naples, managing partner,WIT Strategy, in an e-mail to
eMarketer, June 2, 2009
But on the Internet, there is a seemingly unlimited number of ad
format options available as well as endless choices for the
measurement of online ad campaigns.
Consequently, there is now a tension in the industry between
locking down standards—including agreed-upon definitions and
common measurement platforms—and allowing for innovation,
flexibility and creativity. Certainly, most can agree that standards for
definitions are an absolute must. For example, stakeholders should
all have the same thing in mind when they talk of impressions.
This was emphasized by Jim Meskauskas of ICON International in
an e-mail to eMarketer: “We should certainly start somewhere by
defining how we articulate the ‘facts’ of our discipline (reach,
frequency, impressions, engagement).”
However, Mr. Meskauskas provided an important proviso: “But if
what we are talking about pertains to the amorphous (e.g.,
engagement), then how we talk about it will also be amorphous.”
So what about standardization of measurement platforms? Many
worry that a single measurement technology or company will
enjoy a monopoly, similar to the Nielsen model for television
buying. Others are concerned that a premature, one-size-fits-all
measurement model will stifle innovation and creativity in the
industry. The latter concern, according to some, is unwarranted.
Said David Smith, CEO of interactive agency Mediasmith, in a June
5, 2009, interview with eMarketer, “Yes, innovation is critical—but
only after you’ve run all the numbers, and only as long as you stay
within the guidelines.” In other words, the structure imposed by a
uniform measurement process will actually provide freedom to
innovate and endlessly test creative options.
® Online
“[We need] industry standard measures
everyone can agree on. Measures that go
beyond just standard clicks and traffic
measures.” —Yosi Heber, president, Oxford Hill
Partners LLC, in response to an eMarketer poll fielded by
InsightExpress,April 2009
In the poll eMarketer organized for this report, 46% of respondents
agreed with the following statement:
“Single standards for ad metrics and online performance
systems, set by a leading industry group such as the IAB,
are the major step needed to boost the growth of brand
advertising online.”
Further, only 27% of respondents disagreed, leaving 27% on
the fence.
US Marketing Executives' Opinions on the Need for a
Single Set of Online Advertising Measurement
Standards, April 2009 (% of respondents)
Disagree
16.2%
Strongly
disagree
10.8%
Neutral
27.0%
Strongly agree
13.5%
Note: n=37; numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding
Source: eMarketer, "Online Brand Measurement Survey" conducted by
InsightExpress, June 2009
104495 www.eMarketer.com
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Brand Measurement: Special Report 37
Agree
32.4%

Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
When asked to elaborate on why they agreed or disagreed,
respondents were mixed in their opinions on the need for
measurement standards. Some felt that the industry needs
standards to succeed, while others believed they would be “nice
to have,” but would not “make or break” the growth of brand
advertising online:
■ “There needs to be an industry-defined standard on which to
base effectiveness instead of publishers, marketers and
agencies setting their own baselines.”
■ “The industry needs common ground to set benchmarks and
manage multiple sources of data as a base for broader
discussions about what drives marketing success online.”
■ “Standards are useful, but the IAB has tried many times to
impose them. Realistically, standards won’t be imposed—they’ll
be adopted based on which standards are useful and provide
valuable feedback to their users.”
■ “The IAB is going to face big issues around this effort. In many ways
the tent is simply too big for them to be effective in these efforts.”
■ “It can certainly help the industry to have standards and best
practices for ad metrics and online performance systems.
However, this will have little effect on the growth of brand
advertising online. Marketers will need to determine for
themselves (in a variety of ways) the value of online for branding
and the metrics associated for their brands. In all likelihood, this will
need to play out in bigger scenarios such as market mix modeling.”
The director of research from the IAB, Mr. Laszlo, supports some
level of standardization, as he told eMarketer in an interview.“The
market as a whole should start to narrow down the total number
of metrics,” he explained. “There are so many different things to
measure that it’s hard to say which metrics are the best to use.”
Representing the publisher point of view is Ms. Horan of the OPA.
“In the long run,” she noted in an interview with eMarketer, “would
it be great for us to have a single standard to measure the brand
impact of online advertising—something that’s interchangeable
between all the media? Yes. I hope it happens in my lifetime.”
Media agency executives, who are tasked with much of the
hands-on work that goes into measurement, were similarly
predisposed toward standards. Speaking passionately in favor of
consistent standards for brand measurement was Cary Tilds of
Mindshare-Team Detroit. “Consistently measuring tactics for
digital advertising for their branding effect provides the marketer
the most relevant information,” she said in an interview with
eMarketer. “Random acts of measurement are OK, but they don’t
provide a consistent approach. If you are consistent, you can
improve and evolve.”
® Online
Ms.Tilds added,“I want to focus on the creativity of the actual media
deployment and not argue about audience composition or over
how to measure something. I want to debate the next big idea.The
industry needs consistent dialogue, agreement on standards of
methodology and support from the IAB, the 4A’s and the ARF.”
“[We need] enough standards to establish a
strong foundation, but not so many that
brands are constrained. [We need] more
work on conversion attribution…and
advances in social graph measurement and
analytics.” —Jeff Lanctot, chief strategy officer,
Razorfish, in an interview with eMarketer,April 28, 2009
Before we jump to the conclusion, however, that measurement
standards represent the panacea everyone is hoping for, Mr.
Lanctot of Razorfish, who personally believes in the formation of
standards, added this sobering perspective: “We tend to put too
much weight on standards. There’s this view that once we have
some better brand measurement standards in place, the dollars
will flow. I think that’s overly optimistic.”
Q&A: Should the industry create a standardized
online brand measurement platform?
Amy Fuller
MasterCard Group Executive,Worldwide
Consumer Marketing/Global Products & Solutions
MasterCard Worldwide,
financial services marketer
“There really isn’t a standardized way of looking at brand health,
online or offline. Rather than trying to standardize, why not develop
a few different ways of looking at brand health?” Full Interview
Curt Hecht
President
Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center
(includes Digitas, Starcom MediaVest
Group, ZenithOptimedia and Denuo)
“I don’t think it would be a bad idea. It could be accomplished
through a research consortium or through agency networks.
VivaKi and The Pool is an example. (The Pool is a group of online
video suppliers such as Hulu and CBS and marketers that include
Allstate and Purina that are developing a replacement for the
standard preroll video ad unit.) There is an opportunity to share
insights and data with other companies. I think standards would
help everybody in the industry.” Full Interview
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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
“The market as a whole should start to narrow down the total
number of metrics. There are so many different things to
measure that it’s hard to say what the best metrics are. You run
the risk of having so much data that you can’t draw the story out
of it.” Full Interview
“It’s not the industry that would create standards, it’s an independent
research firm that would work with the IAB. It’s probably a couple of
years off. Nielsen is the likely one to get that going.” Full Interview
Integrate Online and Offline Measurement and Metrics
Beyond developing uniform standards within the online ad
measurement world, there is the larger issue of integrating
measurements across online and offline media.
In the previous section, we reviewed survey data from the 4A’s and
ANA that showed clients and their agencies are not where they’d
like to be in terms of integrating measurement data from their
offline and online advertising efforts. In their related white paper,
however, the 4A’s and ANA offered up some concrete advice for
dealing with the integration issue, including these six tips:
1. Educate yourself. Become as educated as possible on digital
media; network with others who have paved the way by
successfully incorporating digital into their campaigns.
2. Set goals and objectives. Set clear goals and understand
your business objectives upfront.
3. Understand your consumer. Think about the consumers you
are trying to reach, and understand where they go online and
what they do there.
4. Be willing to test and learn. Understand that early pilots and
“failures” can lead to big wins later. Reserve at least a small
portion of your budget for experimentation.
5. Integrate your planning. Digital and traditional media must
be planned together, not in silos. Do not regard digital as a
separate “add-on.” Keep in mind that no media vehicle or
marketing discipline succeeds on its own.
6. Measure. Commit to metrics and analytics, and use them to make
your business case.Agree upfront on the definition of success.
® Online
Jeff Lanctot
Chief Strategy Officer
Razorfish,
Microsoft Corp.-owned digital agency
Wenda Harris Millard
President
Media Link LLC, brand consulting firm
Immediate Past Chair–Interactive
Advertising Bureau
In an interview with eMarketer, ANA CEO Bob Liodice underscored
the need for marketers to look at the whole media pie when
assessing online brand measurement. Said Mr. Liodice, “Our
concern is about brand measurement in total, online or offline. The
vehicle or approach to brand measurement is far less relevant
than what it is we are trying to accomplish.”
He continued: “As we bundle and integrate marketing, rather than
asking whether online, television, radio, print or outdoor
advertising is working, we should ask, how the heck are all of
these things working together? It’s not effective to look at digital in
isolation from the rest of the marketing mix.”
Many in the online ad industry, from all different vantage points,
feel strongly that measurement success will only come if the
Internet adopts the very same metrics used by traditional media.
“The best thing would be to measure online
branding the way we measure offline
branding: awareness, reach, impact,
recognition—coupled with response all the
way to purchase.” —Jim Sterne, founder of the
eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and chairman of
the Web Analytics Association, in response to an
eMarketer poll fielded by InsightExpress,April 2009
Embrace Traditional Media Metrics
Having established that standards for online measurement would
be helpful and that there is a growing need to integrate online and
offline metrics, this raises a serious question: Would it make sense
for the Internet to adopt the standard media planning and buying
metrics of the traditional world—namely reach, frequency and
GRPs? There is a growing consensus in the industry that yes, it
does make sense.
“[We need] basic reach, frequency and GRP
forecasts for planning and post-campaign
analysis that have some semblance to
reality, [so there is an] ability to reconcile.”
—Young-Bean Song, senior director of analytics and the
Atlas Institute for Microsoft Advertising, in an interview
with eMarketer,April 16, 2009
In the interviews eMarketer conducted with industry leaders for
this report, a strong majority conceded that it is now time for the
Internet to embrace the GRP, reach and frequency metrics long
used by television, radio and print advertisers. But there were also
a few dissenters.
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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
The resistance thus far to GRP adoption has been twofold. First,
those pioneers who helped create the market for online
advertising—envisioning its limitless possibilities for interaction and
engagement—are loath to shackle it down with the old metrics of
the past. Second, formulating and applying GRPs to the online space
is just plain difficult.As David Smith of Mediasmith told eMarketer in
an interview,“The [GRP models for online advertising] already exist,
but most people just don’t understand the math.”
But now the tide is turning and the pressure is on. GRPs are
making their way online.
“You will never see P&G and Unilever and
those guys spend more than single digits
[millions] online unless we give them reach,
frequency and GRP numbers. Their business
models are based on media mix models
where those are the inputs and outputs.” —
Young-Bean Song, senior director of analytics and the Atlas
Institute for Microsoft Advertising, in an interview with
eMarketer,April 16, 2009
Without doubt, the strongest proponent of GRP adoption was Mr.
Song of the Atlas Institute (part of Microsoft). A pioneer in the field
of online measurement and analytics, Mr. Song argued that
adopting GRPs is “fundamental” to the Internet’s growth as an
advertising vehicle.
“[In the branding world], we don’t have a perfect view of ROI,”
he explained. “So we revert back to something that we can all
latch onto, something that makes apples-to-apples
comparisons—fundamental metrics around reach and
frequency. So marketers ask, ‘Am I reaching my target audience
and am I doing that cost-effectively?’”
He added: “As soon as…we give advertisers the reach, frequency
and GRP numbers they want, they’ll plug those into their
regression and media mix models and they’re going to say, ‘Wow, I
should be spending 12% of my budget online.’” (Note: The current
industrywide allocation is just under 10%.)
Mr. Song continued, “Ten years from now we’re still going to be
buying media on a CPM basis. These foundational metrics aren’t
obsolete and you can reconcile them on the back end with adserving
data. It’s something both publishers and advertisers can
look at and agree on together.”
® Online
Many in the research field agree that GRPs should be adopted
for online.
“I think one would be crazy to not continue to use that [GRP]
metric,” said Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore. “What it’s telling
you is how many times you reached the person with an ad, and
how many people you’ve reached. I mean, if you don’t have that, I
don’t see how you can really understand the intricacies of your
media plan or compare it across media…. That’s the way media is
sold. We produce GRP measures directly analogous to TV today,
directly analogous to print, to radio.”
Or, as John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, put it in an interview
with eMarketer: “Advertisers have to say, ‘I don’t care how many
impressions I buy, I need to reach 10 million women age 18 to 24.’”
Mr. Hecht of VivaKi was also adamant that GRPs are necessary
from an agency perspective. “Yes, I think reach is relevant,” he said
in an interview with eMarketer. “The form in which you measure it
isn’t as relevant. GRPs keep things simple. Going out and reaching
a lot of people is relevant.”
Representing the online publisher’s side, Jim Spanfeller of
Forbes.com and Ms. Horan of the OPA agreed that GRPs are
needed online.
“In the offline world, GRPs are the metric,” said Mr. Spanfeller. “In
the online world, most of the major online spenders have come up
with their own methodology for online GRPs, but currently, there is
no fully realized version of gross rating points for the Web. We
should measure reach, we should measure frequency and the
four basic brand metrics.”
Ms. Horan noted, “Ultimately, I think [GRPs] is where we need to
get to. We need a metric that will allow marketers to mix and
match and to allocate dollars across whatever the platform is.”
Marketers also seem to be on board. As one brand marketer
expressed it in the eMarketer/InsightExpress poll: “We need to be
able to model online along with other (traditional) media channels
in a standardized fashion to create reach and frequency. Digital
providers continue to resist this. We believe that until this is done
there won’t be the kind of scale online providers are looking for.
This does not replace the other valuable and distinct
measurement options currently available; it simply provides the
tools needed to plan at the brand level.”
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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
Dissenting Opinions on the GRP Issue
Not everyone agrees with the GRP position. In an interview with
eMarketer, senior marketer Ms. Fuller of MasterCard stated her
reasons for taking the opposing view.
“I’m not looking for the same metrics,” such as GRPs, Ms. Fuller
explained. “We have different expectations…. We use digital
media to tell more complicated stories and drive engagement.
The expectation for offline media is to deliver reach and
frequency. I think they operate differently; I’m not looking for
identical metrics [online].”
From the research side, Mr. Gibs of Nielsen felt the GRP had lost its
relevance in the highly fragmented media world in which we live.
“The GRP metric is like a 50-year-old metric,” he said. “It’s very
well-designed for when there was a world of three TV networks.
It’s less well-designed for a world where there are hundreds and
hundreds of TV networks and millions and millions of Websites.”
Instead of reverting back to traditional GRPs, Mr. Gibs argues that
the industry should seek to build a new type of currency model for
Web measurement, one based on quality of data and
transparency: “Transparency means that the clients need to know
exactly what goes into it [the model] so they can trust the
numbers that are being used for the buying [process].”
Another problem cited about GRPs is that they are too limiting. A
marketer relying solely on reach and frequency would fail to
capture the whole picture of exposure to online advertising,
particularly the potentially rich information that comes from online
searches, social sites, mobile activity or video streams. Speaking
with eMarketer from the agency perspective, Mr. Lanctot of
Razorfish indicated that traditional media mix models, including
the reliance on GRPs, are falling apart.
“Looking beyond measurement within a specific media channel, the
media mix models begin to break when you include digital in the
mix,” said Mr. Lanctot.“Consumer behavior online and on mobile
devices is all over the place. Senior marketers are opening their
eyes and saying,‘OK, it’s time to forget everything that I knew.’”
He suggested that the solution lies with a hybrid approach, using
both panels and server-side data. He anticipates that the
aggregation and merging of different data sets will get us closer to
the truth and increase the trust advertisers have in the data results.
® Online
Also from the agency perspective,Yaakov Kimelfeld, vice president of
digital research and analytics director at MediaVest USA, worried that
GRP metrics overemphasize demographics at the expense of
potentially more meaningful determinants such as attitudes and
behavior. Mr. Kimelfeld wrote in an August 1, 2008, article in
MediaPost,“Focusing on reach and frequency limits a digital
campaign’s ability to serve ads based on specific audience
characteristics other than demographics, such as previous purchases
and online behavior. In the end, these narrower criteria may be more
effective in predicting future purchase behavior than demographics.”
Finally, in an interview with eMarketer, Jim Dravillas, senior partnerexecutive
director of analytics at Neo@Ogilvy, posed a question for
proponents of the GRP: “Why does the Internet have to model
itself on traditional modes of measurement? The offline media has
to adapt to the digital environment. My end goal is not the GRP
itself, my end goal is the impact.”
However, Mr. Dravillas conceded that traditional metrics do have
a place at the table. “The GRP is still very helpful from a planning
standpoint, but not as a success measure. I want to try to reach
as many of my target audience as I can in the most effective
way possible.”
How to Make the GRP Work for Online
The GRP metric is basically a blunt measure for how many people
your advertising reaches, and at what level of frequency.
Mr. Song of the Atlas Institute said it best in his interview with
eMarketer: “The problem with the online impression—which is the
closest thing to a GRP right now—is that it doesn’t have a
denominator. What I mean by that is, how many impressions did I
deliver to the universe of women 18 to 45? That’s the
denominator. The GRP is just the numerator. How many gross
impressions did I deliver? [Online,] it’s hard to know what the
denominator is. It’s hard to know how many of those impressions
that you served actually went to women 18 to 45. This is an area
where the TV and print folks actually have an advantage.”
From a branding perspective, Mr. Song sees marketers knowing
more about their audience in traditional media than they do
online. “You actually know less in the online space with the same
amount of data than you would in the offline space. You don’t
know what the frequency is going to be. You don’t know what
percentage of the target audience you’re going to reach. The only
thing you know that’s in common is the number of impressions.”
In his interview with eMarketer, Mr. Song went on to say that Atlas
and other groups, working in collaboration, are figuring out ways
to measure the elusive denominator—the total universe of the
target population.
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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
“We’re not the only ones working on this. It’s also Google, Yahoo!,
AOL and online networks that have large, registered user bases
and ad-serving technology to track everything on a census level
and all the gross impressions. They will combine data sets to
provide traditional advertisers reach, frequency and GRPs. As far
as I’m concerned, that’s the foundation,” he explained.
Taking another tack on the GRP front is Ms. Tilds, senior vice
president at WPP’s agency Mindshare-Team Detroit. Based on the
notion that online and offline measurement platforms need to
“talk” to each other, the agency has developed a new metric called
the iGRP, or Internet gross rating point. This metric was built to
allow for cross-platform measurement between television and
online video buys. Said Ms. Tilds, “The iGRP’s purpose is to confirm
how to go about determining audience reach and
frequency…planning against audience composition.”
She views the iGRP, currently only used for online video, as merely a
starting point in a long evolution:“The GRP is still very relevant.
However, we need to evolve the GRP/iGRP as we evolve the media
delivery and accountability across multiple screens and channels.”
Get Smart About Attribution Modeling
Attribution modeling is all the rage in the marketing community.
Essentially, it seeks to attribute different quantitative weights to
the various consumer touchpoints in an advertising campaign,
from banner ads and sponsorships to online video ads, brand
Website interactions and search activity.
As such, attribution modeling is essentially an offshoot of the
media mix modeling that traditional advertisers have been doing
for years. Media mix modeling helps advertisers determine which
media inputs will have the most effective (and efficient) impact on
sales. They rely heavily on databases, which must be synced up to
provide a holistic view of results.
But attribution models need to go beyond the limited data-capture
capabilities of today’s media mix models and capitalize on the unique
information provided by digital platforms, particularly data relating to
intent.As Mr. Kimelfeld, analytics director at MediaVest USA,
explained on a phone call with eMarketer, the Internet offers up digital
footprints that can imply intent to act leading to purchase.
In his February 1, 2009, article in MediaPost, Mr. Kimelfeld brought
up the example of consumers looking to purchase a car. He wrote,
“The Internet [opens] up a world of searching, price comparison,
consumer reviews and other user resources that have generated
hard data proving that consumers are actively considering the
advertised model—long before they start showing up at the
dealership. Captured on a daily or even hourly basis, these
events…point to the next level of the campaign effects hierarchy,
a more advanced one than branding: They indicate consumers’
intent to act toward the purchase.”
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“Marketers need to understand not only what works
retrospectively, but how they can use data proactively to make
better decisions about the audiences they buy and the way they
deliver messages,” said Konrad Feldman, CEO and co-founder of
Quantcast, in an interview with eMarketer. “When you have a
programmatic way of using that sort of insight across a broad
range of media, you begin to break down barriers.”
“In the case where search has to compete for
a budget against other activities, it wins, as
it generally delivers the most efficient
returns. Only companies that do attribution
modeling and look at media spends
holistically can allocate budgets
appropriately across search, display and
other activities.” —Anonymous agency executive
respondent from eMarketer/InsightExpress poll,April 2009
The absolute level of ad spending behind interactive has typically
been too small to meet the thresholds required in large and
complex media mix models. As Mr. Fulgoni said, “I don’t think
[media mix models] are sensitive enough to pick up the impact of
online. As time goes by and Internet spending continues to grow,
these models will become more relevant.”
Another challenge with attribution models is the sheer
complexity introduced by digital variables in an already complex
modeling system.
“When models begin to approach the
complexity of the reality they’re trying to
explain, they become just as difficult to
interpret—and insight is lost.” —James B.
Ramsey, renowned mathematician and economics
professor at New York University; father of eMarketer CEO
Geoff Ramsey
As Mr. Kimelfeld of MediaVest put it, the biggest challenge with
attribution models is devising methods for “attributing consumer
intent manifestations to individual media platforms and campaigns.”
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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
Exploring Solutions
The bottom line: Mastering how to build effective attribution
models is going to come down to plain old hard work.
“There’s a lot of heavy lifting to be done in terms of making the
appropriate attributions and setting up rules because too many
marketers are crediting the last click,” said Bryan Wiener, CEO of
360i, in an interview with eMarketer. “The main complaint is that
the last click is getting a disproportionate amount of the credit,
and the earlier paid clicks—from display advertising, e-mail and
other things that contributed to the consumer reaching a
decision—are not getting appropriate credit.”
Several key players in the online advertising ecosystem are rolling
up their sleeves to develop and refine solutions for modeling,
including the Atlas Institute (part of Microsoft), comScore and
Nielsen Online.
Mr. Gibs refers to Nielsen’s version of the concept as “media
allocation modeling,” which applies weights to “each creative or
placement or whatever. And what’s important is then you can start
saying, ‘OK, so what’s the role of search?’ and you can layer
search on top. You can say, ‘What’s the role of that microsite I
built?’ OK, then you can layer the microsite on top. ‘What’s the role
of video versus rich media versus standard display?’ OK, then you
can layer them on top.”
Ultimately, attribution models should be designed to tightly align
data results to the marketer’s key objectives, which in many cases
are some sort of sales activity.
“Remember why you’re advertising. You are
not advertising for clicks or [gross rating
points]. What you’re advertising for is to sell
me stuff or change perception, and that’s
what we need to be measuring against.”
—Carrie Frolich, managing director, digital, Mediaedge:cia,
as quoted in Advertising Age, May 18, 2009
As an example, Nielsen, in a partnership with Yahoo!, is able to
match online ad exposures to a panel of shoppers through its
Homescan unit. Said Mr. Gibs, “If a person saw an ad and they
bought a product, it means the ad made them buy the product. So,
it’s a fairly straightforward connection between the two.”
Mr. Hecht of VivaKi has a slightly different view of the problem and,
therefore, the solution. “The most broken part of Web
[measurement] today is the attitudinal piece,” he said to
Advertising Age on May 18, 2009. He believes “the killer app will be
a sort of always-on brand-health meter” that he could dive into on
a regular basis to gauge online ad effectiveness.
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“If everyone used a transactions-based
model, we would have a more accountable,
defensible advertising model, which in turn
would create more stability and confidence
in the interactive industry.” —Scott Knoll, general
manager and vice president of display media, Datran
Media, in an article on iMedia Connection, May 5, 2009
Scott Knoll, general manager and vice president of display media
at Datran Media, said the ultimate solution is to marry three sets of
consumer data into a single database that captures:
■ Online activity across Websites, search, e-mail, video and mobile
■ Anonymous demographic information at the household level
■ Transactional behavior data that can provide definitive results for
ROI-minded marketers
Mr. Knoll provided an example from one of his clients: “A national
tourism agency wanted to run a new advertising campaign and
needed direction on campaign targeting. Drawing on transactional
and anonymous demographics data from a variety of sources, we
found that consumers who responded the best to the agency’s
advertising were single couples, with no children, incomes in the
$100k range, and between the ages of 26 and 45. Better data
means marketers can make business and creative suggestions
with new data insights. With this information, the agency was
better armed to target their future campaigns to consumers who
would be the most receptive.”
Another example of successful attribution modeling comes from
Chrysler and its ad agency, Organic, which designed a media
modeling system that helped the automaker allocate its marketing
dollars more efficiently, including between digital and offline
media. A key insight making the model possible was the fact that
70% to 80% of consumers typically research car purchases online.
“In refining the model, Organic learned how certain ads spur
people to visit the Web,” reported The Wall Street Journal in May
2009. “It then figured out which Web activities translate into actual
auto sales. Some actions, such as scheduling a test drive online or
entering a ZIP code to locate a dealer, are a good predictor of
sales…. The result was a system that predicted 2008 sales within
one percentage point of actual sales figures for its Jeep brands.”
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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
Partnerships Are Proliferating
Partnerships between multiple industry players are rapidly
emerging with the objective of amassing and statistically fusing
tons of data culled from numerous touchpoints. Such
collaborations are designed to get a holistic picture of consumers,
and the impact advertising has on their attitudes and behaviors, all
the way down to the transactional level.
Panel-based measurement firms such as comScore, Nielsen,
Quantcast and Compete, for example, are all working on
multidisciplinary databases that can be mined to connect
advertising exposure with behaviors such as search, site
visitation, video-viewing and, ultimately, purchases.
“We don’t think there is one magical metric.
You need to triangulate across several data
points.” —Stephen DiMarco, chief marketing officer,
Compete, as quoted in Advertising Age, May 18, 2009
As another example, Datran Media, a digital marketing technology
company with a large database of e-mail and postal addresses, is
able to append offline information through its collaboration with
numerous offline data sources, including Acxiom (household
data), IXI (financial data), MindSet Marketing Solutions (healthcare
data) and NextAction (retail data). This bundling of third-party
verified data, packaged under the product name Aperture, allows
marketers to better understand and measure the audience seeing
and responding to their ads, whether those ads are banners, rich
media units or video ads.
Similarly, Omniture and WPP’s Kantar Group are launching a joint
effort that brings together data and analytics assembled from email,
search, display ads and traditional forms of media, creating a
“multichannel view,” according to John Mellor, executive vice
president at Omniture. Also involved in the partnership are
Dynamic Logic and TNS Media Compete.
Finally, research powerhouse Nielsen is combining information
from its recently acquired IAG unit with its Homescan data to
evaluate the link between attitudes and sales.
“It’s going to take a truly concerted effort on
the part of publishers and other
intermediaries to create inventory that is
truly attractive to the creative community
and can be exploited effectively by the
creative community.” —Martin Nisenholtz, senior
vice president for digital operations,The New York Times
Co., in an interview with eMarketer,April 2009
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Championing the View-Through
Another form of attribution modeling is the view-through
conversion—a metric that captures what happens after the
consumer is exposed to advertising, without the consumer
necessarily clicking on any ads. Unlike immediate clicks, viewthroughs
allow for the lag effects of time.
Mr. Song of Atlas describes it as follows: “People [are] exposed to
ads, don’t click on them, but actually end up on the advertiser’s
site to convert. We refer to them as view-through conversions….
There are about 10 times the number of view-through conversions
as there are click-through conversions. [But] the view-through
conversions, as much as people want to add them to their ROI
metrics, are not a measure of direct response. They’re a measure
of whether you’re reaching the right audience.”
Mr. Song continued, “I call it behavior-based target reach analysis.
So instead of a reach analysis that’s based on demographics, it’s
actually based on the behavior of people coming to your site,
people who are turning into leads.”
View-throughs are helpful because they account for the fact that
branding takes place over time. Many advertisers attach zero
weight to view-throughs—often simply because they fail to
measure them. Others give view-throughs all the credit for
whatever results are seen. However, sophisticated tools are being
developed to identify the ideal weight—between 0% and 100%—
for any given campaign.
View-through measurements are offered by a number of players
in the market, including Google/DoubleClick, Microsoft/Atlas and
comScore. In one study, comScore measured the impact of viewthroughs
over time and found that they lifted the likelihood a
consumer would visit the advertiser’s Website. The average lift
was highest (up 54%) in the two weeks after exposure; however,
even after four weeks, the lift continued (up 45.7%).
Building New Measurement Models for Social and
Video Environments
Advertising on social networks and certain video sites can provide
marketers with new and exciting opportunities to actually listen to
consumers and find out how their brands and advertising campaigns
are perceived in real time.While the measurement of these
interactions is still in its early stages, there is a huge payoff for those
willing to invest the time, energy and money to innovate. Moreover,
the benefits go way beyond the confines of the social media platform.
“I view listening as an important analytic,” said Mr. Mendenhall of
Hewlett-Packard. “As you employ listening and other analytics,
they start to drive your strategy at a macro-level. They either
reinforce your strategy or correct it, and give you opportunities for
ideas, products, services, segments and/or geographies that
you’re not even in.”
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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
Doug Weaver, founder and CEO of the Upstream Group, said social
media can be like a Richter scale for marketers wanting to gauge
the impact of their entire marketing efforts.
“For perhaps the first time ever, marketers can put a campaign or
a message out into the public consciousness and then really hear
and see its impact,” wrote Mr. Weaver in his May 2009 newsletter.
“A brand can throw rocks into the pond and then measure both
the quantity and quality of the ripples that follow. By all means,
pour your time, money and resources into this channel to really
understand the full ROI of all your marketing activity.”
Such listening efforts conducted online can provide marketers with
a sort of inexpensive “sounding board” for creative concepts they
might want to run offline.This can help advertisers save money by
testing creative concepts online to see what works before investing
in far more expensive television commercials or magazine ads.
Effective measurement of social media activities requires a new,
expanded mindset as well as a means to integrate data gathered
from all types of media. In an interview with eMarketer, social
media guru at Nielsen Online Pete Blackshaw summed it up well:
“On one side, you’ve got paid media and on the other you’ve got
earned media. Put consumer-generated media, social media and
a lot of indirect marketing on the earned side, and paid media—
offline and online—on the unearned side. The two kinds [can]
synergize [with] one another because paid advertising can help
stimulate the conversation. What we need is a measurement
model that can look at the two—both in distinct buckets, but also
as an ecosystem where one is feeding the other. Brand equity is
heavily impacted by the way in which the two interact.”
Mr. Blackshaw concluded, “Brands need to figure out models for
looking at all of this in totality. It would be the ultimate brand
dashboard that can look at ad measurements plus consumer
perceptions through social media, and do it in real time.”
Just as standards are needed for measuring online advertising
programs in general,many feel standards need to evolve for the social
world,as explained by Ms.Tilds of Mindshare-Team Detroit:“There is a
lack of standards on the data-mining aspects of social media.It hasn’t
evolved because everyone wants to make their standard a
competitive advantage,but that is the worst thing to do for the
industry.There should be a call for a standard and an open dialogue.”
Marketers are also excited about online video ads. Why? Because
they can offer the sight, sound, motion and emotion of television
ads, and provide better potential targeting and measurability. The
digital nature of online video ads also means they can instantly be
shared with others. For brand marketers looking to engage with
consumers, online video ads provide a variety of metrics,
including time spent. According to LiveRail, consumers watch, on
average, more than 80% of a 30-second online video ad.
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“With online video, there is time-based media
buying where time is one component of the
mix. The advertiser is buying a person’s
attention. I’ve seen very few standards on
what time means.” —Cary Tilds, senior vice
president, Mindshare-Team Detroit, in an interview with
eMarketer, May 2009
When it comes to measurement of social media and video,
advertisers are in the very early stages of connecting the dots.
Q&A: What are the measurement challenges with
respect to online video?
Joe Laszlo
Director of Research
Interactive Advertising Bureau,
trade association
“There are a lot of different kinds of metrics being captured,
analyzed and used to support the effectiveness of video
campaigns. I would hope that the industry starts to whittle down
the sheer number and decides that complete views are great, but
midpoint views don’t necessarily give you a lot of useful data.”
Full Interview
Young-Bean Song
Senior Director of Analytics & Atlas Institute
Microsoft Advertising,
Microsoft Corp.’s digital
marketing and media solutions provider
“The instinctual reaction of advertisers to try and show the sales
impact of a video campaign is really misguided. We have studies
showing that video, photo-sharing, weather and social media
placements look horrible in the online ROI equation because they
are upper-funnel. People don’t see ads on Facebook and then go
buy something. But we are doing engagement mapping which is
the ability to associate sales credit or ROI to all of the digital
touchpoints in a person’s history.” Full Interview
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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
“Identifying scalable ways to track online video can be complicated
and there are special ways to track exposures.There’s also a
proliferation of different formats and then there are proprietary
players. Did people turn the sound on, did they stop the ad, did they
rewind or repeat it and if so, how many times?” Full Interview
“There’s a lot of experimentation going on as to ad placement and
format—be it preroll or postroll. I’m not sure anybody has figured
it out or what counts as engagement with an online video ad.
We’re running video ad tests looking at the impact on brand
metrics and impact on sales.” Full Interview
Unraveling Consumer Engagement Metrics
Although few in the industry can agree on a common definition of
“engagement” in the context of online advertising measurement,
clearly the Internet offers unique opportunities here given its
interactive nature.
Marketers, their agencies and a plethora of other industry
stakeholders are working hard to develop engagement metrics
that can act as proxies for attitudinal or behavioral changes they
want to influence.
“We are in the process of trying to figure out the most effective
way of attributing shifts in brand health to online activity,” said Ms.
Fuller of MasterCard Worldwide, in an interview with eMarketer.
“The easier part of the equation is measuring engagement. The
question is: How do you get more sophisticated about measuring
the quality and impact of brand engagement?”
Ms. Fuller added, “We look at time spent on our site and whether
or not people engaged with the games we have there, how
much traffic we’re able to drive and viral/social activities we are
able to generate.”
As Mr. Hecht of VivaKi said in an interview with eMarketer, “What
we need to do is focus more on the outcomes and outputs of
digital media. We’re focused more on brand engagement metrics
that enable us to have better proxies for behavior and attitudes.”
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Ken Mallon
Senior Vice President–Custom Solutions
and Ad Effectiveness Consulting
Dynamic Logic, research company
specializing in marketing effectiveness
Gian Fulgoni
Chairman and Co-Founder
comScore Inc.,
provider of online audience
measurement and survey research
Those in the research field have their own ideas about what
constitutes engagement. Nielsen, for example, is a big believer in
time spent as a measure of engagement and brand impact. Mr.
Gibs of Nielsen put it this way: “The single biggest problem is that
the current measurement methodologies are insufficient to deal
with the complexities of online advertising. The solution we
believe quite strongly in is that measures of advertising online
should be time-based measures, rather than impression-based
measures. Instead of buying 100 million impressions on a Website,
it would be buying X% of a person’s time.”
Mr. Gibs went on to explain that time-based measures align
publisher incentives with advertiser goals. When time spent is the
metric advertisers are paying for, Web-based publishers will want
to create an engaging environment so visitors stick around and
interact with the advertising.
From the agency side, Cory Treffiletti of Catalyst:SF argues that
time is not only a key measurement online, but that marketers
should be adding up all the pockets of time spent with the brand
as a kind of overall engagement metric. As he said in his June 3,
2009, Online Spin column in MediaPost, “Time spent across the
entire campaign is the only metric that truly covers all the bases.”
Others argue that time spent is insufficient.
“The key is to compare more than time spent, utilizing the
interactive nature of the engagement unit,” wrote Joe Marchese,
also for Online Spin, in April 2009. “Marketers should look to tie
engagements directly to changes in brand perception, purchase
intent and, in the end, purchase decisions.”
Mr. Wiener, CEO of 360i, likes the idea of a cost-per-engagement
metric, but he also advocates a restructuring of disciplines within
marketing organizations and a concerted effort to stop conflating
direct response and branding measurements.
“I believe that coming up with a cost-per-interaction or cost-perengagement
metric is an important component for a solution,”
said Mr. Wiener. “There is no panacea. One of the challenges is that
people are looking for the Holy Grail.”
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Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement
Q&A: What is the potential game-changer for online
brand measurement?
“We’re looking for deeper analytics and to tie them all the way
through to retail. In five, maybe 10 years, consumers will receive
custom messages for specific retailers on their phone. They’ll
store their preferences and the information will go right into their
loyalty card. They will choose where they want to shop and the
offers will follow them there.” Full Interview
“Media allocation modeling, which analyzes all the elements in a
campaign that contributed to an action, sale or behavior and not
simply giving the last click all the credit. Marketers buying or
planning digital media on time-based measures rather than
impression-based measures.” Full Interview
“I don’t think there’ll be a single game-changer. But I think the
most important thing is that chief marketing officers need to give
clear mandates and reorganize internally and externally around
making digital a priority as a brand-building medium. There needs
to be a clear delineation between brand objectives and metrics
and direct response objectives and metrics. I think everything else
follows from that.”
“Marketers need to understand not only what works
retrospectively, but how they can use data proactively to make
better decisions about the audiences they buy and the way they
deliver messages. When you have a programmatic way of using
that sort of insight across a broad range of media, you begin to
break down barriers.”
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Mark Addicks
Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer
General Mills,
consumer packaged goods marketer
Jon Gibs
Vice President–Media Analytics
The Nielsen Co.’s Nielsen Online,
provider of online audience measurement
and analysis
Bryan Wiener
Chief Executive Officer
360i,
digital marketing agency
Konrad Feldman
Chief Executive Officer
Quantcast Corp.,
online audience measurement service
Next Steps: A Seven-Point Plan
This final section summarizes the next steps for
the industry in a short, seven-point action plan.
Once again, in keeping with the community
nature of this report, the reader is encouraged to
add comments and suggestions.
1. Reorganize and Restructure Your Teams
First, marketers need to restructure their organizations so that
online marketing reports directly to the CMO. This is the only way
that attribution and cross-platform models will be successful.
Second, marketers and their ad agencies need to reorganize their
internal teams and structures to concentrate on the branding
component of the online measurement process as a separate and
distinct process from direct response measurement.
Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i, put it well: “Digital is too often
synonymous with direct response. CMOs need to look at their
marketing organizations and the way their agency roster is
organized. If they want digital to be an effective brand-building
medium, they need to reorganize their departments and have
people who understand digital and agencies that understand
digital. Everything else follows from that.”
Added Mr. Wiener, “There needs to be a clear separation and
delineation between brand objectives/metrics and direct
response objectives/metrics. I think mixing the two, which we’ve
all been guilty of, has created more confusion.”
To quote author Jim Collins, you also need get the right people on
the bus. Specifically, you need two kinds of people: left-brainers
and right-brainers.
Left-brainers manage the terabytes of data, build complex models
with databases that talk to each other, and then channel that data
into actionable insights. Left-brainers are typically logical,
sequential, rational, analytical and objective. They look at parts.
Right-brainers are the creative types who can craft advertising
that strikes an emotional chord, changes attitudes and motivates
people to buy. Right-brainers are random, intuitive, holistic,
synthesizing and subjective. They look at wholes.
And finally, of course, you have to bring the left-brainers and rightbrainers
together. As John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, told
eMarketer, “There has to be a change in the way agencies are
structured. Media buying, media planning and creative have to be
done cross-platform.”
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Next Steps: A Seven-Point Plan
2. Partner
Key stakeholders, including ad agencies, research houses, portals
and Web analytics firms, should strive to establish deep, broadly
encompassing partnerships.The goal? To build up huge,
multiplatform databases that sync up demographic data, audience
data, attitudinal data, behavioral data and transactional data.
Focus on hybrid models that combine the best of panel
measurement and brand intercept platforms.
3. Build Cross-Media Coalitions
The major media trade associations, including the IAB, ARF, 4A’s,
ANA, OPA and the WAA (Web Analytics Association) must step up
their efforts to align goals and committee efforts to develop
common standards, definitions and best practices for
measurement. A common currency is also a must.
As such, the industry needs to develop standardized methods for
applying reach, frequency and GRPs to online platforms.
(Importantly, the denominator in the GRP equation must be the
total US population, or total target universe—not the population of
the medium.)
The adoption of GRPs will be a starting point in providing
marketers with apples-to-apples measurements that they can
plug into their media mix models.
Building on the GRP model as a foundation, the next step is to
overlay the data that is unique to the online space and provides a
digital footprint measuring how the consumer is engaged with the
brand over a period of time. This could include time spent as well
as a host of other engagement metrics. The goal is to move from
media ad buckets and data silos to true integration—measuring
across media.
4. Create Next-Generation Attribution Models
Put a laserlike focus on building attribution models to identify and
quantify the value of every media touchpoint along the purchase
funnel. Tie that data into holistic models that can help marketers
make future decisions about media allocations, both within the
online universe and across all media platforms. Among other skill
sets, this will require a mastery of Web analytics.
Additionally, the models need to incorporate social media and
video activity. Marketers must make it a priority to systematically
monitor social media interactions and use this valuable
“listening/learning” to inform their online and offline media and
creative messages. One of the biggest challenges will be to
measure the sharing activity among social consumers, including
online video ads and widgets, which can affect a marketer’s reach
and engagement levels. Those who are able to connect all the dots
will enjoy a significant competitive advantage.
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5. Become Educated
While models can provide insight, the models themselves need to
be shaped by insights that come from the real world—specifically,
through market research that will tell you what online consumers
are doing and what they are likely to do in the future. By arming
yourself with information and trend data, you will be able to ask
the right questions and design measurement systems and models
that capitalize on real consumer behavior and attitudes.
“Data is useless unless it becomes currency
for making a decision.”
—Rashid Tobaccowala, CEO, Denuo, as quoted in
MediaPost, June 10, 2009
6. Take a Long-Term View
Remember there is no silver bullet. Hard work and careful
planning will be necessary to reinvent online brand measurement
and coordinate it seamlessly with offline measurement. There are
no shortcuts to success.
7. Make a Commitment
Wherever you are in the online marketing ecosystem, make a
commitment to improving online measurement for your brands,
or those of your clients. While measurement is not the only thing
that needs fixing in the online advertising industry, it is a huge
obstacle to more ad dollars coming through the pipeline.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 48

Endnotes
Endnote numbers correspond to the unique
six-digit identifier in the lower left-hand corner
of each chart. The charts from the report are
repeated before their respective endnotes.
102197 | 104363 | 104366
US Online Advertising Spending Growth, 2007-2013 (%
change)
2007 25.6%
2008 10.6%
2009 4.5%
2010 9.4%
2011 10.8%
2012 13.5%
2013 10.4%
Source: eMarketer, April 2009
102197 www.eMarketer.com
US Online Advertising Spending, by Format and
Objective, 2008- 2013 (millions)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Display ads $4,877 $4,655 $4,824 $5,034 $5,426 $5,543
Video $734 $1,054 $1,501 $2,109 $3,134 $4,092
Rich media $1,642 $1,691 $1,849 $2,079 $2,359 $2,641
Sponsorships $387 $319 $348 $386 $438 $484
Branding total $7,640 $7,718 $8,522 $9,608 $11,357 $12,760
Search $10,546 $11,956 $13,534 $14,969 $16,648 $18,340
Classifieds $3,174 $2,671 $2,412 $2,554 $2,831 $2,976
Lead generation $1,683 $1,764 $1,930 $2,138 $2,393 $2,604
E-mail $405 $392 $402 $431 $472 $521
Direct response $15,808 $16,783 $18,278 $20,092 $22,343 $24,440
total
Grand total $23,448 $24,500 $26,800 $29,700 $33,700 $37,200
Note: numbers may not add up to total due to rounding
Source: eMarketer, April 2009
104363
102197 104363 104366
www.eMarketer.com
® Online
US Online Advertising Spending Growth, by Format
and Objective, 2008-2013 (% change)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Video 126.5% 43.5% 42.5% 40.5% 48.6% 30.6%
Rich media -0.8% 3.0% 9.4% 12.4% 13.5% 12.0%
Sponsorships -39.2% -17.7% 9.4% 10.8% 13.5% 10.4%
Display ads 9.4% -4.6% 3.6% 4.4% 7.8% 2.2%
Branding total 8.0% 1.0% 10.4% 12.7% 18.2% 12.4%
E-mail -4.5% -3.2% 2.6% 7.1% 9.6% 10.4%
Search 19.8% 13.4% 13.2% 10.6% 11.2% 10.2%
Lead generation 6.3% 4.8% 9.4% 10.8% 11.9% 8.8%
Classifieds -4.4% -15.9% -9.7% 5.9% 10.8% 5.1%
Direct response total 11.8% 6.2% 8.9% 9.9% 11.2% 9.4%
Grand total 10.6% 4.5% 9.4% 10.8% 13.5% 10.4%
Source: eMarketer, April 2009
104366 www.eMarketer.com
Extended Note: eMarketer benchmarks its US online advertising
spending projections against the Interactive Advertising Bureau
(IAB)/PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data, for which the last full
year measured was 2008. Online ad data includes categories as
defined by IAB/PwC benchmark—display ads (such as banners),
search ads (including paid listings, contextual text links and paid
inclusion), rich media, video (including in-stream, in-banner, intext),
classified ads, sponsorships, lead generation (referrals) and
e-mail (embedded ads only); excludes mobile ad spending.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 49

Endnotes
104394
Comparative Estimates: US Online Advertising
Spending Growth, 2009 (% change*)
-6.0%
104394
® Online
-2.0%
-5.0%
-0.5%
LiveRail, September 2008
JupiterResearch, December 2008
BMO Capital Markets, October 2008
Wachovia, October 2008
ZenithOptimedia, April 2009
3.0%
2.3%
2.1%
1.5%
5.0%
5.0%
4.5%
4.3%
6.2%
7.4%
7.2%
Jefferies & Company, February 2009
1.0%
Credit Suisse, February 2009
0.1%
10.0%
13.0%
Borrell Associates Inc., November 2008
SNL Kagan, May 2009
Collins Stewart LLC, May 2009
GroupM, March 2009
eMarketer, April 2009
Citi Investment Research, January 2009
ThinkPanmure LLC, October 2008
Barclays Capital, May 2009
Morgan Stanley, March 2009
Thomas Weisel Partners, March 2009
Myers Publishing LLC, May 2009
Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., February 2009
UBS, February 2009
Cowen and Co., May 2009
14.8%
19.4%
Note: *vs. prior year
Source: eMarketer, April 2009; various, as noted, 2008 & 2009
104394 www.eMarketer.com
Extended Note: Barclays includes auctions, display, lead
generation/e-mail, search and other. BMO Capital includes
classifieds, display ads, e-mail, lead generation, rich media and
video, search, slotting fees, sponsorships and other. Borrell
includes standard display ads such as banners and pop-ups,
streaming audio/video, paid search and direct/e-mail. Citi
Investment Research includes banner ads, classifieds, digital
video, e-mail, lead generation, rich media, search and
sponsorships. Collins Stewart includes banner ads, classifieds,
e-mail, referrals/lead generation, rich media/video, search and
sponsorships. eMarketer benchmarks its US online advertising
spending projections against the Interactive Advertising Bureau
(IAB)/PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data, for which the last full
year measured was 2008. eMarketer includes categories as
defined by IAB/PwC benchmark—classifieds, display ads (such as
banners), e-mail (embedded ads only), lead generation (referrals),
rich media, search ads (including paid listings, contextual text links
and paid inclusion), sponsorships and video (including in-stream,
in-banner, in-text)—and excludes mobile ad spending.
JupiterResearch includes classifieds, display and search. Myers
includes display, online video/social networks/widgets, search
and other. ThinkPanmure includes banner ads, classified ads,
e-mail (embedded ads only), lead generation, rich media, search
(paid and contextual), sponsorships and video. ZenithOptimedia
also includes Internet radio and podcasting.
104597 | 104600
US Online Display and Search Advertising Spending
Growth, 2008-2013 (% change)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Search* 19.8% 13.4% 13.2% 10.6% 11.2% 10.2%
Display ads** 9.4% -4.6% 3.6% 4.4% 7.8% 2.2%
Note: *paid listings, contextual text links and paid inclusion; **banner ads
only, excludes rich media and video
Source: eMarketer, April 2009
104597 www.eMarketer.com
US Online Display and Search Advertising Spending
Share, 2008-2013 (% of total)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Search* 45.0% 48.8% 50.5% 50.4% 49.4% 49.3%
Display ads** 20.8% 19.0% 18.0% 17.0% 16.1% 14.9%
Note: *paid listings, contextual text links and paid inclusion; **banner ads
only, excludes rich media and video
Source: eMarketer, April 2009
104600
104597 104600
www.eMarketer.com
Extended Note: eMarketer benchmarks its US online advertising
spending projections against the Interactive Advertising Bureau
(IAB)/PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data, for which the last full
year measured was 2008.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 50

Endnotes
104573
Comparative Estimates: US Online Display and Search
Advertising Spending Growth, 2009 (% change*)
Online Search
display
Barclays Capital, May 2009 -1.0% 10.0%
BMO Capital Markets, October 2008 -2.0% 21.0%
Citi Investment Research, November 2008 -5.0% 14.0%
Collins Stewart, November 2008 3.0% 13.0%
Cowen and Company, May 2009 - 1.0%
Credit Suisse, January 2009 -5.9% 8.1%
eMarketer, April 2009 -4.6% 13.4%
Forrester Research, April 2009 1.7% 13.9%
JPMorgan, January 2009 6.3% 9.9%
Myers Publishing LLC, May 2009 -3.0% 1.0%
Oppenheimer & Co., February 2009 -15.0% 10.0%
SNL Kagan, May 2009 4.6% 9.1%
ThinkPanmure, October 2008 -5.0% 13.0%
ZenithOptimedia, April 2009 -1.8% 9.0%
Note: *vs. prior year
Source: eMarketer, April 2009; various, as noted, 2008 & 2009
104573 www.eMarketer.com
104573
Citation: Barclays Capital, "Internet Data Book May 2009,"
provided to eMarketer, May 14, 2009; BMO Capital Markets,
"Internet Media & Broadcasting," provided to eMarketer, October
30, 2008; Citi Investment Research, "US Advertising: Batten Down
the Hatches," provided to eMarketer, November 10, 2008; Collins
Stewart LLC, "Global Internet," November 24, 2008; Cowen and
Company, "Internet & New Media," provided to eMarketer, May 22,
2009; Credit Suisse, "US Advertising Outlook 2009," provided to
eMarketer, January 9, 2009; Forrester Research, "US Interactive
Advertising Forecast" as cited by Inside the Marketers Studio, April
23, 2009 with eMarketer calculations; JPMorgan and company
reports, "Online Advertising Forecast," provided to eMarketer,
November 3, 2008; JPMorgan and company reports, "Nothing But
Net," January 5, 2009; Myers Publishing LLC, "Advertising &
Marketing Investment Forecast 2008-2010," May 4, 2009;
Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., "Media & Internet," provided to
eMarketer, February 24, 2009; SNL Kagan, "Economics of Internet
Media," provided to eMarketer, May 21, 2009; ThinkPanmure LLC,
"Internet Advertising," October 8, 2008 provided to eMarketer,
October 22, 2008; ZenithOptimedia, "Advertising Expenditure
Forecasts - March 2009," provided to eMarketer, April 14, 2009
Extended Note: Barclays includes display, rich media and video.
BMO Capital, Citi Investment, Collins Stewart, eMarketer,
Oppenheimer and ZenithOptimedia include banners only. Credit
Suisse includes banners, rich media and video. JPMorgan includes
display. Myers includes banners, rich media and other.
ThinkPanmure includes display, rich media, listings and other.
eMarketer benchmarks its US online advertising spending
® Online
projections against the Interactive Advertising Bureau
(IAB)/PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data, for which the last full
year measured was 2008. In its search figures, eMarketer includes
paid listings (paid search), contextual text links and paid inclusion.
103522
Online Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics in the
US, Q4 2008* (% of respondents impacted)
Aided Online ad Message Brand Purchase
brand
awareness
awareness association favorability intent
Control 72% 25% 17% 42% 39%
Exposed 74% 30% 19% 44% 40%
Delta** 2.4 4.9 2.6 1.6 1.3
Note: n=2,380 campaigns and 3,889,602 respondents; *includes three
years through Q4 2008; **delta defined as point difference in exposed vs.
control groups
Source: Dynamic Logic provided to eMarketer, April 27, 2009
103522
103522
www.eMarketer.com
Extended Note: This chart shows the % impacted as a result of
exposure to the online ad campaign. For example, on average,
2.4% of people (or 24 out of 1,000) exposed to online ads become
aware of the tested brand.
103523
Online Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics in the
US, by Level of Campaign Performance*, Q4 2008** (%
of respondents impacted)
Aided Online ad Message Brand Purchase
brand
awareness
awareness association favorability intent
Top 8.9% 14.0% 9.5% 7.5% 7.1%
Average 2.4% 4.9% 2.6% 1.6% 1.3%
Bottom -2.3% -1.6% -2.0% -3.5% -4.0%
Note: n=2,380 campaigns and 3,889,602 respondents; *best performers
are the average of the top 20% of campaigns per metric and worst
performers are the bottom 20% of campaigns; **includes three years
through Q4 2008
Source: Dynamic Logic provided to eMarketer, April 27, 2009
103523
103523
www.eMarketer.com
Extended Note: Read chart as saying that on average, online
campaigns in the top 20% of performers impact 7.1% of people
with respect to purchase intent.
Brand Measurement: Special Report 51

Endnotes
102827
Interactive* Advertising's Effect on Brand Metrics in
the US, by Site Category, January 2009 vs. August 2008
(% change in delta**)
Branded content sites
(OPA members)
63% 7% 8% 40% 0%
MarketNorms® database -11% -8% -10% -18% -13%
Portals
-9% -3% -6% -11% 0%
Ad networks
-21% -7% 0% -18% -40%
Note: *involves the audience without having them click through or leave
the Webpage; **delta defined as point difference in exposed vs. control
groups
Source: Online Publishers Association (OPA) and Dynamic Logic, "Improving
Ad Performance Online: The Impact of Advertising on Quality Content
Sites," January 8, 2009
102827 www.eMarketer.com
102827
Extended Note: Branded content sites–respondents with
campaigns running for the past three years through Q3 2008.
MarketNorms® database–respondents with campaigns running
for the past three years through Q2 2008.
® Online
Aided
brand
awareness
Online
ad
awareness
Message
association
Brand
favorability
Purchase
intent
Related Information and Links
360i
http://www.360i.com/
Aberdeen Group
http://www.aberdeen.com/
Acxiom
http://www.acxiom.com
AdMedia Partners
http://www.admediapartners.com/
AdRelevance
http://www.adrelevance.com
Advertising Age
http://adage.com
Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)
http://www.thearf.org/
Adweek
http://www.adweek.com
Alterian
http://www.alterian.com/
American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s)
http://www.aaaa.org
Association of National Advertisers (ANA)
http://www.ana.net/
Atlas Institute
http://www.atlassolutions.com/
BMO Capital Markets
http://www.bmocm.com
Catalyst:SF
http://www.catalystsf.com
CMO Council
http://www.cmocouncil.org/
Compete
http://www.compete.com
comScore
http://www.comscore.com/
Cowen and Co.
http://www.cowen.com
Credit Suisse
http://www.credit-suisse.com
Brand Measurement: Special Report 52

Related Information and Links
Crossix Solutions
http://www.crossix.com
Datran Media
http://www.datranmedia.com
DoubleClick
http://www.doubleclick.com
dunnhumby
http://www.dunnhumby.com
Dynamic Logic
http://www.dynamiclogic.com/na/
Eyeblaster
http://www.eyeblaster.com
Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/
Forrester Research
http://www.forrester.com
General Mills
http://www.generalmills.com/corporate/index.aspx
Heidrick & Struggles
http://www.heidrick.com
Hewlett-Packard
http://www.hp.com
ICON International
http://www.icon-intl.com
iMedia Connection
http://www.imediaconnection.com
InsightExpress
http://www.insightexpress.com/
Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)
http://www.iab.net/
iProspect
http://www.iprospect.com
IXI
http://www.ixicorp.com
Jefferies & Co.
http://www.jefferies.com/
Johnson & Johnson
http://www.jnj.com
® Online
Kantar Group
http://www.kantargroup.com
Lenskold Group
http://www.lenskold.com/
LiveRail
http://www.liverail.com
Lotame Solutions
http://www.lotame.com
Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG)
http://www.mengonline.com
MarketingProfs
http://www.marketingprofs.com/
MarketingSherpa
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/
MarketSphere
http://www.marketsphere.com/
MasterCard Worldwide
http://www.mastercard.com/us/gateway.html
McKinsey & Co.
http://www.mckinsey.com/
Media Link LLC
http://medialinkllc.com/
MediaPost
http://www.mediapost.com
Mediasmith
http://www.mediasmith.com/
Microsoft Advertising
http://advertising.microsoft.com
Millward Brown
http://www.millwardbrown.com
MindSet Marketing Solutions
http://www.mindsetmarketing.com
Mindshare-Team Detroit
https://www.teamdetroit.com/
Myers Publishing
http://www.jackmyers.com
MySpace
http://www.myspace.com
Brand Measurement: Special Report 53

Related Information and Links
Neo@Ogilvy
http://www.neoogilvy.com/home/
NextAction
http://www.nextaction.net
Nielsen Homescan
http://www.homescan.com
Nielsen Online
http://www.nielsen-online.com/
OfficeMax
http://www.officemax.com/
Omniture
http://www.omniture.com
Online Publishers Association (OPA)
http://www.online-publishers.org/
Oppenheimer & Co.
http://www.opco.com
Organic
http://www.organic.com
Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates
http://www.psbresearch.com
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
http://www.pwc.com
Primary Impact
http://www.primaryimpact.com
Procter & Gamble
http://www.pg.com
PROMO magazine
http://promomagazine.com/
PubMatic
http://www.pubmatic.com/
Quantcast
http://www.quantcast.com/
Razorfish
http://www.razorfish.com/
Rubicon Project
http://www.rubiconproject.com/
Sapient
http://www.sapient.com/
® Online
Specific Media
http://www.specificmedia.com
Spencer Stuart
http://www.spencerstuart.com
Starcom MediaVest Group
http://www.smvgroup.com
The New York Times Co.
http://www.nytco.com/
The Nielsen Co.
http://www.nielsen.com
TNS Media Intelligence
http://www.tns-mi.com
Universal McCann
http://www.universalmccann.com
Upstream Group
http://www.upstreamgroup.com
Verse Group
http://www.versegroup.com/
VivaKi Nerve Center
http://www.vivaki.com/
Web Analytics Association (WAA)
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org
WPP Group
http://www.wpp.com
Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.com
Brand Measurement: Special Report 54

Related Information and Links
Contact
eMarketer, Inc. Toll-Free: 800-405-0844
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Report Contributors
Special thanks to eMarketer colleagues who contributed
to this report:
David Hallerman Senior Analyst
Tobi Elkin Writer
Evelyn Majewski Senior Researcher
Patrick Miller Web Designer
Dana Hill Production Artist
Susan Reiter Managing Editor
Kris Oser Communications Director
Yael Marmon Research Director
Nicole Perrin Copy Editor
Elissa Hunter Copy Editor
Allison Smith Senior Editor
Tracy Tang Senior Researcher
Tony Feyer Motion Graphics
Jared Jenks Numbers Editor
James Ku Data Entry Associate
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