new wine in old wineskins – or measuring new media with old media measurements

• You can’t measure new media with old media frameworks and currencies.  Opportunities-to-see [OTS-] based measurements work best with mass media – because they are mass.  All they offer a brand are opportunities to be seen.  In the case of new media – search, forwards, downloads, RFI – we are not just looking for opportunities to be seen – we are dealing with opportunities to be experienced and our messages acted upon.
  
• Because you can’t measure new media with OTS-based measurements as you would TV, radio, presses, or magazines, it’s going to be hard to compare these.  Either we stick to OTS-based measures and apply them to new media – or we upgrade our measurement techniques that we are using for old media.
  
• I think the second option is a better route: we need to upgrade our measurement techniques to take into consideration action and response to traditional, old media, and not just exposures and opportunities to be seen.
  
• Descriptive measures are good – it tells me how many people have seen the ad or at least, how many people have potentially seen the ad (in cases where we don’t have minute-by-minute ratings for TV or radio). 
  
  It’s also good to know how many people clicked on the ad after having entered a specific keyword – and eventually purchased.
  
  But wouldn’t it be nice if your measures are PREDICTIVE rather than purely DESCRIPTIVE?
  
  Telling me that my current campaign delivered 103.3 GRPs or 0.05% click-through or even 0.01% click-to-action conversion doesn’t help me plan the future – which I am concerned about.
  

Comments

[Long tale]

Interesting point, but I'd have thought descriptions were the yield of the infrastructure and the predictive bit of the bargain was planners' raison d'etre.

How else can planners, consultants and the like justify charging a fee for their largely intangible product?

[Philip Tiongson]

Thanks, Long Tale, for the comment. The funny thing is there seems to be a lot of emphasis on descriptive reporting amongst 'planners' - even amongst those who claim to be good with, say, Google Analytics and other similar stuff online. When I look at them, I see nothing but percentages and "how many converted". There seems to be no further exploration into "why things are such" and "how things will be".

I guess some clients just don't want to be bothered, I guess, that's why planners can get away with it.

As for consultants, most that I have met and worked with are great - it's just that one has to be aware of the "signal-to-noise" ratio sometimes. They can tend to be overzealous about their predictions and their assumptions that one needs to take it with a grain of salt.

Thanks again.