Marketing Effectiveness News & Releases

LONDON, 26 March 2008 – The 2007 Global Marketing Effectiveness Report by The Fournaise Marketing Group – one of the global leaders in Marketing Performance Science to Generate More Customer Demand, that specialises in tracking & boosting, on a real-time basis, marketing campaigns deployed both offline and online – showed that close to 70% of marketers who advertised online were unsure if they actually got what they paid for (a number reaching 78% in North America and 75% in the United Kingdom), while 68% didn’t know if they could trust the visitor/traffic profile online media owners and publishers claimed.

What this means is simple: despite today’s buzz on all things digital, despite global interactive advertising being forecast to reach US$147 billion by 2012 from the current US$45 billion*, and despite three online media platforms making it to the Fournaise 2007 top 10 marketing Effectiveness Ranking (or EFFER), in the day-to-day reality of generating incremental customer demand for their products or services, marketers seem to have a major trust issue when it comes to the overall reliability and credibility of online advertising.

In such a skeptical context, it is not surprising that 40% of marketers around the world did not run online campaigns in 2007, a figure reaching 65% in high GDP growth markets such as Greater China, India and Singapore.

The top five concerns marketers have about online advertising are:

#1:	They don’t know if they actually get what they pay for
#2:	They don’t know if they can trust the visitor and/or traffic profile online media owners and publishers claim their sites have
#3:	They have the feeling there is a lot of click fraud
#4:	They don’t know if their ads appear in the sites and/or sites’ sections where they should appear
#5:	They don’t trust the traffic and click-through reports digital media owners give them

This could explain why marketers globally are planning to still take a prudent approach and to spend a small percentage of their marketing budgets online in 2008.

“Across the thousands of online campaigns we audit track for our clients worldwide through our independent WebAnalyser™ and its 6-t Audit Tracking methodology, we have been observing consistently poor results: Click Through Rates (CTRs) have fallen as low as 0.15% (sometimes even lower), Conversion Rates (CVRs) are barely reaching the 3% average, and as far as Returns on Marketing Investment (ROMIs) are concerned, our clients are most of the time flirting with the sub-30% numbers,” said Jerome Fontaine, CEO and Chief Tracker of The Fournaise Marketing Group.

“One of the main reasons for such poor results is that for more than 70% of the online campaigns we audit track across all types of online media platforms (including display ads, emails, paid search, referrals, rich media and sponsorships), our clients did not get what they paid for: one million impressions purchased often ended up with 800,000 impressions served; an email blast to a third party 10,000-record database was more often than not sent to a 7,000-active-email base.

The bottom line: the discrepancy between what is claimed and/or purchased and what is actually delivered is beginning to cast a shadow on the long-term credibility of the industry. Online media have now the immense challenge of winning the trust and confidence of marketers and must be prepared to be audited and be accountable for the results they deliver,” Fontaine continued.

There are two types of auditing that marketers look for when advertising online

#1:	Independent auditing of what media owners and publishers claim about their medium in terms of audience profile and demographics, traffic data etc; and
#2:	Independent auditing of the results of individual campaigns – actual number of impressions served, placement of ads, pay-per-click results, CTRs, CVRs etc.

Such auditing is well established with traditional media including print and broadcast, but online media have lagged behind for far too long.

“Online media platforms have the potential to grab a larger share of the marketing budget alongside traditional stalwarts such as newspapers and TV. They can be a powerful component of the communications mix and marketers will spend more of their budgets online if they have independent audit tracking of the results generated to ensure they truly got what they paid for, and if the results clearly contribute to the top and/or bottom line of the company,” added Fontaine.

Unless marketers around the world have this audited peace of mind they enjoy and expect with traditional media, online advertising spending may never cross the 25% mark some forecasts are claiming it should be surpassing in the coming years, and therefore may never seriously challenge traditional media when it comes to capturing the real big spending.

*Source: The Kelsey Group’s Annual Forecast: Global Interactive (February 2008)