|
The News – 08/01/01
Online
Advertising = Online Branding
A new study by Jupiter Media Metrix estimates that the Return
On Investment (ROI) from online advertising may be 25 to 35 percent higher
than most advertisers believe. The reason for this is that most marketers
don’t measure the branding effects of online advertising. This is a point I
have stressed in the past with my clients: Even if the ad campaign doesn’t
drive huge volumes of customers to buy your product, there is a halo effect
of making prospects aware of your brand, and in the development of that
brand’s equity. Very few marketers (15 percent) conduct formal online
branding measurement, probably because it’s harder to do than tracking direct
response metrics, including click-rate (60 percent) and cost per conversion
(75 percent).
Part of the problem in measuring online advertising’s effect
on branding is that online is still a secondary factor in most companies’ brand
development, said Jupiter. In fact, online advertising only delivers 17
percent of the traffic to a Web site, with the rest coming from search
engines, word of mouth, or other advertising and branding efforts.
It doesn’t look to get any easier for marketers to measure
online advertising effects due to the fractured reach of most major sites.
Jupiter points out that Yahoo, one of the best ad vehicles on the Net,
splits traffic among 438 separate domains, making it hard to track
advertising.
All this means that if you’re only measuring click through
rates, you’re really not understanding all that online advertising is doing
for your business.
Asia.Internet.Com
Briefly
Noted
- Shameless Self-Promotion Dept.: News Flash: Shoemaker’s
Children Get New Shoes. You’ll notice I’ve added a search
capability to the StratVantage Web site, courtesy of Atomz. Atomz
makes a pretty full-featured search engine available to small potatoes
sites like this one for free. The lateness of this addition is ironic
because for years I’ve insisted that you don’t have a Web site unless
you have a search capability. I even wrote a book
chapter on the subject. Well, do as I say, doggonit, not as I do!
Anyway Atomz is a pretty cool product. The search engine code stays on
their server and they spider your site once a week and maintain the
index for you. If you have more than 500 pages, you’ve got to pay.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
StratVantage
- Nokia Readies 850MHz GSM Phone: For a while I’ve been
scratching my head and wondering how cell phone network giant ATT
Wireless was planning to introduce GSM in the US. GSM is the cell
phone standard used by more than 550 million subscribers in more than
170 countries outside North and South America. ATT’s network is based
on the TDMA standard, which, although related to GSM, is not
compatible. Turns out Nokia is working on GSM cell phones that work on
the 850MHz spectrum that ATT’s TDMA phones use. The cell phone maker
claims this technology will allow TDMA carriers to transition to GSM,
and from there to the higher speed GPRS, EDGE, and eventually WCDMA
standards. If you’re confused by the acronyms, think, fast, faster,
fastest wireless data access. I understand the evolution from GSM to
GPRS to EDGE, as they are all related technologies. But I just don’t
get how GSM-based networks are going to convert to WCDMA, an evolution
of the totally incompatible CDMA standard. Bottom line: all kinds of
good things are forecast for ATT’s network, especially considering ATT
is also planning on introducing Japan’s i-mode standard by year end.
If you’re not confused about wireless, you’re not paying attention.
Nokia
- OK, I Gotta Mention Code Red: In case you haven’t heard the breathless media
alerts, the Code Red Internet worm (a kind of virus) has relatively
easily infected hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Web servers and is
poised to take action today. I’m wondering why anyone would use
Microsoft’s Internet Information Server on the Internet. When’s the
last time you heard of the Apache Web server being hacked and hundreds
of thousands of Sun sites infected with a virus? Yet these two pieces
of technology run the bulk of the Web, vastly outnumbering
Windows-based Web sites. Windows has its place. It’s not on the
Internet. Of course, that’s just my opinion, and I could be wrong. You
know, I thought I was wrong once in 1987, but I was mistaken. Ö¿ð
C|Net
- Not Another Microsoft Story! OK, I tried to resist. I
really did. Honest. But this wonderful quote from Microsoft
spokesperson Vivek Varma regarding AOL’s inking of an exclusive deal
to feature their online service on Compaq computers is just priceless:
“(AOL) is paying PC makers to eliminate consumer choice.” To which AOL
spokesperson John Buckley retorted, “It's called competition.” Glad he
pointed that out, as Microsoft may not be familiar with the term. You
may remember that Microsoft used to charge PC makers for Windows even
if they preinstalled a competitive operating system.
USA
Today
Can’t Get Enough of ME?
In the unlikely event
that you want more of my opinions, I’ve started a Weblog. It’s the
fashionable thing for pundits to do, and I’m doing it too. A Weblog is a
datestamped collection of somewhat random thoughts and ideas assembled on a
Web page. If you’d like to subject the world to your thoughts, as I do, you
can create your own Weblog. You need to have a Web site that allows you FTP
access, and the free software from www.blogger.com.
This allows you to right click on a Web page and append your pithy thoughts
to your Weblog.
I’ve dubbed my Weblog
entries “Stratlets”, and they are available at www.stratvantage.com/stratlets/.
Let me know what you think. Also check out the TrendSpot for ranking of
the latest emerging trends.
Return
to Mike’s Take
|
.