Why oh why do we measure?!
To assess effectiveness of campaigns
Improve our existing site activity
Comparing activity to set benchmarks
To understand where to spend our money
To understand the "cross channel" consumer
To uncover new opportunities for growth!
Understanding WHY we measure is the first step towards best practice accountability in advertising and marketing! Then, the next stage is to understand WHAT to measure and HOW! We can use some really simple equations to compare and contrast measurements, and draw insight from them...
Outlined below are a number of measurements that can be collected in relation to the different digital technologies.
For Search, Affiliate, Display metrics this might include:
- At a metrics level: Impressions, Clicks, Click thru' and conversion between them
- At a cost ratio level: CPC, PPC, CPA, CPS
For Display advertising where advertisers are trying to establish 'in banner' engagement it might include:
- Mouseover/rollover, video opens, video view time, number of expands in banner and interaction time.
For Social networks you might pursue engagement metrics that include:
- Number of tweets, Likes, fans, friends, posts, comments, and other interactions plus the more accountable measures such as click thru's to the web site, (although this is not always relevant as many Facebook sites are designed to give the total communication interaction and are not designed to send people over to the web site)
Metrics that help with Interpretation:
In addition to all the campaign specific metrics that can be collected it is important to track a range of variables that might be having an effect on your activity. These can include general campaign variables such as:
Site position, creative used in ad, editorial environment that the ad was in, target audience of the site, Day of Week, Time of Day, Month of Year, other general PEST factors and +ve/-ve PR or competitive activity that might effect you
Broader consideration of other activity that might be running and how long you have been running the ad (is it wearing out) in an attempt to look at trends and attribution of effects.
Some of the common metrics that are used to analyses the comparative effectiveness of sights, ads and compaigns are listed below:
Clicks / Responses / Visitors
Average order values (AOV)
Return on Investment (ROI)
Coming up right after the break, an outline on some of the key calculations that you need to be able to identify these figures. Don't touch that dial!
(Cheers BigCommerce & About Spirituality Forum for the lend of the pics)
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