Measuring of ad campaign success is more stringent for portals

Banks, consumable brands etc spend big monies on print medium but never put any conditions on them – such and such percentage of your readers “have” to buy our product in response to our ad and only then we (advertiser) will pay you (print).

The advertiser cannot put such a condition as they cannot track the response of the reader. But there is one way to track – introduce discount coupons in the print ad and the advertiser will know how well the ad performed based on the number of coupons encashed. Anyways, I don’t think it will work in India.

But when it comes to advertising online, boy! there are tons of parameters – number of surfers who have seen the ad, number of clicks, number of conversions etc etc. I personally believe in India people do see the advertisement banners, they get an impression of the brand but they go and purchase that item “offline”. So the portals never get the credit of initiating the sale.

I came across an interesting article about Engagement 2.0:

Today, a true measure of engagement must include behaviours besides opens and clicks. Even purchases, while an important number, do not tell the whole story.

For example, what about forwards? If a customer gets an email that they like so much, that they feel so strongly about that they forward it to their entire email list, isn’t that worth something? Doesn’t that represent a truly engaged customer?

Or take a customer who opens all your email but never makes a single purchase: he or she is not necessarily more engaged—or more valuable—than a customer who opens one-tenth of your email, but spends loads when they do.

Conversely, if a customer opens your email and then unsubscribes from your list, well that’s a customer who you failed to engage. In the old scheme, the fact that they opened it generates a positive engagement score; the fact that they then unsubscribed is never captured….