Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Multichannel Marketing Class June 10: Measuring across channels and PPC

We talked about a number of different ways to measure responses across channels. I likened the search for the ability to measure across channels and attribute response to specific media actions to the search for the Holy Grail. There are so many new media and it is difficult to know if the response came from the last sales contact, banner ad, or search stream. Approaches vary from surveying consumers to field experiments (treating one group differently from the control to see if there is a change in sales or response rates) to building sophisticated models to simulate and measure response. I shared some research from Don Schultz at Northwestern where he has used survey data from an online panel to then determine media influence. In the example Don gave us, Auto Makers were spending too much money on television advertising and not enough on the internet, in terms of perceived influence. Industry data is useful as a starting point but many marketers want to see what the effect is on response in their particular company situation. The search will continue for the best models.

We also looked at Pay Per Click in Google and saw how expensive some keywords can be and discussed bidding strategies. It can be a good strategy to go for the third or fourth spot to save money and still be 'above the fold.'

2 comments:

Nick Serritella said...

per-per click advertising seems like it can get very expensive. I was wondering how much cheaper it would be to use pay-per click on sites such as yahoo, MSN, or even the new Bing?

Unknown said...

I don't understand how pay-per click is so expensive. I personally never click on those advertisements, and I know from class discussions I'm not alone. I'd be interested to see the buying difference between companies that use pay per click and those that just use the free search.