{"id":1757,"date":"2023-09-14T14:51:37","date_gmt":"2023-09-14T13:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=1757"},"modified":"2023-09-14T14:51:37","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T13:51:37","slug":"measuring-the-wrong-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/measuring-the-wrong-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring The Wrong Things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A version of this post appeared in The Media Leader on 12th<\/sup> September.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The media and advertising world is measuring the wrong things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And – we may be measuring some of the right things whilst fooling ourselves that what we\u2019re measuring means something it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Take a metric like online clicks. On the surface this is a useful number. If someone clicks on something that surely suggests they\u2019re interested in the thing they\u2019ve clicked, they\u2019ve considered it, decided they want to know more about it, so they\u2019ve clicked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except we all know there is more to it. Bots click; people click by mistake; fingers slip; the layout of the page is designed to entrap you into clicking on the wrong thing. And so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the myth persists. Ask any Editor. Why run fake, sensationalist headlines? Why the listicles? Because of the number of clicks. And clicks, even fake ones, mean prizes, or at any rate ad revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But why? If a large proportion of clicks are fake, why do advertisers persist in believing the metric means anything?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take a legacy measure; reach. The percentage of people seeing an ad, right? Except that isn\u2019t what\u2019s measured. At best we\u2019re measuring the opportunity to see an ad, whilst in the USA we don\u2019t even get that close given the focus is on measuring the viewing to the programme and not the ad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s taken a new measurement business, Amplified Intelligence to demonstrate that just maybe reach isn\u2019t what people think it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To many consumers, \u2018advertising\u2019 means any brand communication. It\u2019s all \u2018advertising\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But most measurement conversations ignore those communication channels the industry doesn\u2019t consider to be \u2018advertising\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things like in-store displays, delivery vehicles, shop-fronts, events, influencers, word-of-mouth. Most of these are from a measurement perspective routinely ignored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I worked for many years on the Coca-Cola account. Coke had for decades bought the famous illuminated roundel site on Piccadilly Circus. It must have been at least 25 years ago that we were asked to estimate that site\u2019s reach, not just the traffic past the site over time but to include the number of times it had featured on postcards, in scenes in movies, on tourist maps, in books and articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a good question. How else could Coca-Cola calculate the true worth of that site?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We struggled; we would struggle now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all the talk of integrated communications we have made little progress when it comes to metrics. Yes, the within-a-single-medium metrics like BARB are subject to constant review and improvement, but this is akin to whistling an aria in a thunderstorm, it\u2019s satisfying and impressive to those close by, but to anyone any distance away it\u2019s not even noticed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We argue about the little things. We become immersed in the politics of measurement and forget the question we\u2019re trying to answer. We\u2019re quick to believe the \u2018because we\u2019ve always done it this way\u2019 argument, even if the world around us has changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We talk so much about integrated communications and yet we still use share-of-voice which by definition is neither accurate (given what\u2019s measured and what\u2019s not) nor relevant (given what\u2019s included and what\u2019s not).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2014 HBR paper he co-authored, Keith Weed, ex-CMO at Unilever said: \u201cWe believe that the most important marketing metric will soon change from \u201cshare of wallet\u201d or \u201cshare of voice\u201d to \u201cshare of experience.\u201d \u2018Soon\u2019 is overdue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need to update the narrative to take account of all interactions between brand and consumer. The IPA\u2019s work on owned media, its value and where and how it fits into plans is a great start, but for channels to fly they need the jet fuel of measurement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an uncomfortable truth that many of the metrics we use have failed to keep pace with the communication world we live in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advertisers need to measure every experience the consumer has with their brands. Advertisers and their advisors talk endlessly about integrated communications. It\u2019s about time more measured it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A version of this post appeared in The Media Leader on 12th September. The media and advertising world is measuring the wrong things. And – we may be measuring some of the right things whilst fooling ourselves that what we\u2019re measuring means something it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1758,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions\/1758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}