The debate about whether online advertising is art or science (and here) misses the point (though I agree with Cory's point that we aren't as balanced as we should be). Most pundits ultimately come to the realization and conclusion that it is both art and science…but what we fail to recognize is that we as an industry are behind traditional media on both axes.
The challenges and opportunities on the art side of online advertising are well-trod territory and I can’t add much to Randall Rothenberg’s recent challenge to the industry.
I want to focus on the science side because I haven’t seen online marketers and online publishers acknowledge the scientific acumen of traditional media. And we should, because traditional media does it better. Take a look at this screen shot from Nielsen nPower, which is the de facto standard for TV media planning.
Front-and-center in this tool are the metrics that matter to a marketers’ success: reach and frequency. Every show is understood in terms of its unique reach and frequency – and here is where the science of TV planning leaves online behind – Nielsen tells the planner each show’s contribution to cumulative reach and frequency. Knowing this data and having it in a scenario-generating tool makes it simple to optimize for cost-effective reach with low waste…or to focus on the art side of TV media planning (e.g., shows with the right type and level of engagement with attitudinally receptive viewers).
Online cannot deliver this kind of precision in media planning – despite the fact that our precision in media delivery (e.g., targeting women 18-49, which is this marketer’s goal) is far better than TV. With TV, you buy the whole show, the women, the men, everything. With online, you can be much more efficient and just reach the women. But when you’re planning your buy on TV, you know exactly how many people in your target demo you will reach (and TV makes good against the reach), whereas with online, reach “forecasts” on a particular site are an inexact science at best. And understanding cumulative reach across sites and networks is almost impossible in online today.
Kudos to Comscore and Nielsen for stepping into the online reach and frequency arena with Comscore R/F(tm) and Nielsen NetView(tm), which provide high-level forecasts (perhaps closer to guesses) at cumulative reach. This is the first step toward delivering what 50 years of TV buying experience has taught the TV media ecosystem: media planning can’t be reduced to a science, but the science can take a lot of the complexity out of the process and give us the freedom to focus more on the art.
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