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Microsoft Says Not All Ad Clicks Are Created Equal
kyle6477 writes to share that Microsoft is hoping to change the way advertising is thought of, and ultimately valued, online. Their new Engagement ROI tool tries to track a user's ad clicking habits and distribute the credit over all of the ads that led to an eventual sale as opposed to the last ad clicked getting all the credit. "Say a consumer sees an ad for a product in a video ad one day, and then clicks on a text ad to visit the retailer's site the next day, and then eventually sees a banner ad that leads to a purchase. All of the monetary credit tends to go to the text link that was clicked on."
To track all of your traffic.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
This really seems like a wasted effort. Presumably, it is either the case that the ad that was clicked on was more convincing than the other ads, causing the purchaser to finally cave in, or it was no more convincing and just benefited from the luck of the draw. If it was the case that this individual ad was what convinced the consumer, I see no reason it shouldn't get all the credit. If it was not the case that this individual ad was more convincing, then when you take the total ad revenue on average, none of the ads should be getting more revenue than any of the others.
To put it another way, if one ad is generating a lot more revenue than other ads, there's a reason for this. Whether it be placement, timing, appropriate context, better design, or whatever. If none of these things are the case, then I submit that the ads should all be generating equivalent revenue.
In short, Microsoft is developing a solution in search of a problem. Either that or it's just another attempt at tracking the consumer's every last act, hidden under a patina of equitable distribution of ad revenue.
I gotta better one! Instead of spending time trying to beat Google at their own game, they could concentrate their efforts at improving their core products. Like, say, operating systems!
My blog
I don't know anyone who's ever been surfing a website, saw an ad for a gadget, or a shirt, or anything, and said "Wow, I just found out I need to buy that!"
Advertising doesn't really work like that. Much of advertising is just an attempt to create familiarity. So when you DO suddenly decide you "need to buy that!" you'll at least have a passing familiarity with the product that was advertised to you.
AccountKiller
But it's occurred to me that this business about measuring an ad's value by counting clicks is BS.
The same marketers that think an ad is worthless because not enough people visited their page don't think that television or newspaper ads are worthless because not enough people snapped off the TV and called the company.
They get no feedback from TV or newspaper ads - other than a rough estimate of how many people viewed them. Yet from an Internet ad, they expect potential customers to drop what they're doing and rush to the company's website.
For instance, the ad at the top of this slashdot page right now says "A golden opportunity to make Java apps richer... click here". It includes a meaningless picture of some golden eggs. No mention of the company name, product name, or anything that might stick in our minds for later. From their perspective, either we click now or the ad was useless.
They'd never run that ad on TV or in the paper ("blah blah blah, call now."), then cancel their TV ad because nobody called. They'd include some company and product info, and hope we remember them.
So why do they expect so much more from Internet ads?