I participated in a panel discussion focusing on the new measurement landscape for agencies at Digiday: On Media yesterday. It was a fantastic discussion with a cross section of agencies, marketers and publishers which centered on those important and recurring issues: how to measure Digital, how to make measurement valuable, and a discussion of current trends in analytics and resource allocation.
There were some valuable key takeaways from the discussion that all marketers should consider:
- Why measure if goals are unclear? It is extremely important to have clarity of goals and expected outcomes of measurement, else you may be hunting for the wrong metric. As basic as this concept may seem, panelists agreed that many marketers need more focus in this area, as well as an understanding and overall readiness to make measurement actionable.
- Data and technology bring more transparency. It was clear from experiences shared by panelists that digital media (as well as the increased digitalization of traditional media such as IPTV) provide increased transparency: an ability to have better visibility into consumer behavior across multiple locations, devices, and media. However, this does not come without challenges (see next point) but in turn creates lots of very powerful opportunities.
- What are the right metrics? While there was a lot of discussion around click-through rates, view throughs, earned media, attribution…It is apparent that there is a lot of learning to be had within Digital (i.e. across Search, Display, Social, Mobile, and other emerging media) but also and importantly integrating Digital and more 'traditional' marketing vehicles and demand generation drivers, as well as looking at these within a competitive lens. This poses particular challenges as data sets become bigger and more complex. I shared some examples from retail and e-commerce categories where taking a comprehensive cross-media view helped our clients reveal what really drives demand and align their investments and success metric tracking accordingly.
- Make it actionable. There was broad consensus that goals and expected outcomes are important. Likewise, ensuring that measurement is connected with action was a common and very important theme. The need for frameworks and processes that enable the insights ' action ' learning ' more insights ' better outcomes cycle is as relevant as ever, particularly where Digital provides quick feedback that can be acted upon for course correction or improvement.
The conversations with conference participants continued after the panel and suggest that while the issues above are pressing challenges for marketers, agencies and publishers - the industry appears ready to take them on. Are you?