FACEBOOK TO MARKETERS CLICKS DON T Issue, BUT Orbit AND FREQUENCY DO

Facebook to Marketers: Clicks Don't Count, But Orbit and Oftenness Do

By Todd Wasserman 1 October 2012 18:11:48 UTC

The sociable meshwork ripe its modish line to a jammed way of merchandising execs at the IAB MIXX league in New York featuring Conductor of Pricing and Measuring Brad Smallwood (depicted) and Tom Buday, drumhead of merchandising and communicating at asterisk student Cuddle.

Facebook on Monday continued its delegation to convert the man's top marketers that the banner way of measure an on-line ad's operation — the click-through value — doesn't issue.

Facebook's rake to marketers was that the society would cypher such thresholds for them and guarantee that apiece crusade reached its likely. To emphasise its pointedness, it showcased Buday's get with Cuddle. Buday criticized the approximation of a media program same Facebook having a set ROI. Alternatively, he reiterated that the character of the merchandising communicating plays a big function.

The ace superlative origin of purchase is the timber of messaging, whether its a TV commercial-grade or a spot on a Facebook Varlet, he aforementioned. It's not platforms that employment or don't oeuvre, it's stigma communications and messages that do.

To pad his line, Smallwood cited explore from Nielsen (the party, not the father) that showed a 0.07% correlativity betwixt eminent click-through rates and real sales. Smallwood too trilled out approximately new information from a work conducted with Datalogix that plant 99% of sales generated from on-line stigmatization ad safari came from consumers who saw ads, but didn't interact with them. The composition besides produced fuzzier statistics, wish campaigns that maximized range generated an mean 70% higher ROI than those that didn't and that campaigns that maximized oftenness had a 40% higher ROI. Since Smallwood didn't scheme what constitutes either maximized ambit or oftenness, the stat seemed brusque on specifics.

Yet, he emphasised that apiece cause is potential to sustain a dissimilar brink for apiece.

In his demonstration, Smallwood compared mixer media to the youth of telecasting, which lacked a measure metrical until Arthur Nielsen introduced a ratings organization in 1950. Smallwood proposed that the industriousness bank on the two measurements that birth served TV fountainhead since that clock: stretch and frequence.

Facebook, which has underwhelmed Wall Street with its ability to monetize its format, particularly the mobile iteration, via advertising, has been making the clicks don't matter argument for some time. Even the parallel with Nielsen Ratings isn't particularly new since the company has been pushing Nielsen's Gross Ratings Points as a metric since last August.

To instance his head, Buday showed slides of Nest stigma Underweight Cow's extremely occupied Facebook Page. If you view the typical Facebook Page, it's rarely this good, Buday said immodestly. To achieve its high level of success, Nestle not only followed Facebook's recommendations for reach and frequency (both of which are enhanced by ad buys), but adhered to a strict rulebook on communications on the platform. (Example: Go easy on the cow puns.) In Buday's view, the onus is on the brand marketer to compete for attention in the News Feed with husbands, wives, kids and nephews.

Whether Facebook will succeed in convincing Corporate America that CTRs are a relic of the past remains to be seen. Though there are plenty of doubters. including General Motors. there are proponents likewise, including Scott Monty, Ford's global digital/multimedia communications manager who, like Buday, ridiculed the idea of measuring Facebook via clicks. What's the ROI of a TV commercial? he asked. What's the ROI of a handout? What's the ROI of putting your pants on every day?

It's hard to measure but there's negative consequences for not doing it.