One of my main beefs about the online adtech business is how so many people working within it are so narrow in their knowledge and their thinking about advertising. Too many seem to believe that the end point is the technology and the algorithms, and not helping ensure that each ad works as hard as it can.<\/p>\n
The former is formulaic; the latter demands some creativity in thinking.<\/p>\n
Having said that it was a pleasure to attend the first part of Quantcast\u2019s Supernova event this week and to listen to Peter Field and Les Binet on measuring advertising effect.<\/p>\n
For those unfamiliar with the Field\/Binet work their latest instalment draws upon over 1,000 case studies dawn from the IPA\u2019s archives and which cover not just the UK but increasingly other markets too. This they have supplemented with another few hundred cases from Australia, covering the Pacific Rim. They have looked at short-term and long-term effects, using a mass of data.<\/p>\n
Amongst their conclusions:<\/p>\n
Kudos to Quantcast for exposing this thinking to a room full of people by far the majority of whom live in the immediate short-term, for whom a 30-day window is rather more common than the 1 \u2013 10 year windows used by Peter and Les.<\/p>\n
Maybe a few of them went away prepared to reconsider what business they\u2019re in<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was also highly pertinent to remind everyone of the importance of creativity \u2013 it was fascinating and highly relevant to hear from a Pixar lead animator.<\/p>\n Consumers, we know from a wide variety of sources enjoy great advertising (look at the public interest in the John Lewis Christmas campaign, used as an example by Field and Binet; or at the anticipation ahead of new blockbusters by Guinness, or Nike).<\/p>\n On the other hand look at the fuss around adblockers, a problem very largely created by the adtech business and its application as opposed to by the wider advertising industry (even if blockers of course affect us all).<\/p>\n