Gregory Dale, COO, comScore

By Allan Maurer

RESTON, VA – Most people think of the digital world as direct response media, says Greg Dale, COO of digital measurement firm comScore. “You click on the monkey, go to some form and do something.” Yet, “The click is absolutely the wrong measure” of a digital ad’s effectiveness, says Dale.

At a recent event where he spoke, Dale asked the audience how many people had clicked on a banner ad last week? Last month? Last year? Few hands went up. So it’s a mistake to try to understand the effectiveness of an ad by how many people clicked on it, he says.

As one of comScore’s first employees, Dale played a critical role in the creation of the world’s largest representative, continuously monitored consumer panel. And those panels bring an extra dimension to comScore’s analysis of digital advertising and marketing, he says.

Panels are just one part of comScrore’s “unified measurement,” which includes standard  Web analytics and other means.

Unified measurement a comScore key

Dale says unified measurment is one of the main topics he’ll address at the Digital East event in Tysons Corner, VA, Oct. 18.

A panel is essentially a group of people who agree to have their digital use measured for market research purposes. “The concept is old and used to be done via a diary or filling out sheets. We use a small piece of software on their computer and they’re tracked in an anonymous pool that identifies only their demographic characteristics – a male with a certain level of income, etc.

That allows comScore to provide its clients with data such as how many people visit both the client and a competitor’s site; whether people watch more video on another site than on the client’s; how many ads do they see?

Marketing campaigns are unique, Dale says and they’re not always designed to sell products directly.

Goals differ

“Goals differ. Sometimes a campaign is to raise awareness of a brand or introduce a new product to a group. We offer products to help measure that, to help understand how well it did hitting target segments, how much did awareness increase?”

ComScore studies have shown that effectively placed digital advertising campaigns can perform as well or better than TV advertising at moving package goods. But people don’t necessarily buy the product online. Many see the ad and buy in the brick and mortar store.

The economic downturn has actually pushed more marketing campaigns online, Dale says. “It’s a cheaper medium, which is something that does well in a recessionary environment.” That’s contributing to the continued death of many print media outlets, although TV has been able to maintain.

Even TV is seeing the number of people who view an ad drop year after year because of the proliferation of channels, Dale notes. “I don’t know how they keep their rates jacked up. It’s one of the trends that’s baffling.”

Don’t use click throughs

But, Dale says, the more a company such as comScore can educate people on measuring online media in the right way, the smarter they can be about how they spend their money.

He re-emphasizes, “Don’t use clicks to measure a branding campaign,” and adds, “Cookies don’t equal people.”

“There is a whole other world out there,” Dale says, adding that the comScore panels help understand that side of the equation. “How effective was your advertising?” To find out, the marketer should ask if it raised awareness, fostered the right kind of activity, made a customer or potential customer more engaged or led to buying in a store.

How good is the creative?

A key element to success, Dale says, “Is how good is the creative? That will have a huge effect on the campaign no matter how good everything else is.” A company may run tons of ads on your site, he points out, and then say, the response was terrible. “Do they think about discussing the quality of the ad on the site? Typically that’s never taken into account.”

You also need to be able to look at the connections between an ad and the content on the site, the “amplification that a site can provide.”

So, Dale concludes, “You need to be very careful of what you measure and you need to understand all these elements to measure in the right manner.