There used to be, just a few years ago, quite a chasm between traditional advertising and online advertising. That chasm is becoming more like a gap, especially as the Web grows to engulf all media and audiences fragment. The new question then isn’t how advertising on the Web and via traditional media differ, but what traditional media tools and knowledge can be applied online.
Coverage of the videos from the event this week.
A panel of experts representing the top online metrics companies discussed this issue at ad:Tech in San Francisco today, and agreed online and traditional marketers had a lot they could learn from one another.
David Smith
Many of the basic tenets of traditional advertising apply online. David Smith, CEO Mediasmith, identifies three of these basics as reach (of an ad/campaign), the frequency the ad is shown/seen, and a term that may be new to many online marketers: gross rating point (GRP). GRP represents the percentage of the target audience reached by an ad. For example, an ad that airs three times reaches 30 percent of the target audience, it is said to have a GRP of 90 (frequency x percentage reach).
GRP can be problematic for both sides of the debate. For the online marketer who focuses purely on ROI and clicks, GRP is branding metric voodoo that doesn’t account for ad blindness or clickbots. For offline marketers looking online, audience fragmentation means GRP numbers come out distressingly low.
“GRP is the direction we want to go,” said Jon Gibs, vice president of media analytics for Nielsen Online. “Media planners have trouble realizing that numbers aren’t going to be as big as they are in television, but the opportunity is different.”
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