One online advertising skeptic turns about face:
Web Advertising '98 Coverage, #10
Yoder Sings New Tune
March 17, 1998
This is the final in a series of 10 reports from Richard
Hoy, who covered the Web Advertising '98 conference
in New York. You will receive these reports in addition
to your normal Online Ads posts/digests.
These reports are archived at:
o-a.com
Yoder Sings New Tune
Branding on the Internet
David Yoder, Anderson and Lemke
David Yoder, executive media director at Anderson and Lemke,
has always maintained that branding on the Web is not cost as
effective as branding in traditional media. He determined this by
measuring the Web point for point against other media. This time,
however, he tempered that opinion by saying there is something to
the concept of interacting with a brand - something we have poor
methodologies with which to measure.
As he did in the past, David broke out three major points of
comparison between costs for the Web and for other media:
1.) cost of production
The cost to produce creative for the Web is far cheaper than it is
for most other media. According to David, the average cost to
produce a TV commercial is $300,000; for radio it is $20,000; for
magazines about $40,000; and for newspapers about $35,000.
Compare this to the Web, where the average cost to produce a
banner is about $2,000. Cost is the reason, David surmises, why
the banner will remain the dominate creative unit on the Web. It
allows both smaller advertisers to play the game and larger
advertisers to inexpensively create multiple appeals.
2.) cost per thousand
The cost to buy online media is far more expensive, in David's
estimation, than other media. Prime time television can be had for
a $7 CPM. Prime time cable is about a $3.50 CPM. Network
radio is a $2 CPM. Magazines cost about a $4 CPM.
Newspapers cost about a $9 CPM. But the Web costs on
average a $30 CPM. David points out that if we define branding
as just someone being exposed to something, traditional media is
far cheaper. However, if we consider branding interaction with the
brand, the Web wins hands down.
"It is a whole new way of thinking," he said.
3.) cost of reach
David said that reach in a medium has a lot to do with how long
people spend within that medium. He cited numbers form Media
Metrix showing that about 48 percent of the online population
spents less than one hour during the course of one month. His
point is that almost half of the online population isn't online all that
often. Looking at it another way, David compared the reach of
seven major computer publications from Ziff-Davis to the reach of
the ZDNet Web site. The print publications reach roughly 6.5
million people at a CPM of $19. The Web site only reaches about
3 million people and costs twice as much ($43 CPM). However,
David admitted he was surprised at data from Media Metrix that
showed the amount of reach Yahoo provides. The graph is fairly
linear - meaning that doubling your impressions on Yahoo just
about doubles your reach. The same was true for the ZDNet Web
site, SportsZone, and the USA Today Web site. So the Web's
reach, though not as large as traditional media, is something that
should not be dismissed. And note that this is just reach in the
home, which is all Media Metrix can currently measure. There are
no figures yet on how this translates regarding business use, but it
is certainly hopeful that this trend would be there as well.
Though the Web doesn't fare too poorly in the above
comparisons, it is seemingly not as appealing cost-wise to other
media. But while traditional media only allows you to do "passive"
branding, David pointed out that the Web allows you to do
"active" branding. People are in a much different mindset - what
David termed the "seeking mindset" - when they are online.
Therefore, he concedes that it may not be fair to directly compare
traditional media to the Web. We may, in fact, need different
metrics to measure the effects of branding on the "seeking
mindset."
Traditional metrics are based on impressions (or total eyeballs)
seeing the creative. It is also focused on what the medium brings to
the message and the prospect. David said that maybe we need to
look instead at the total impact of a medium's attributes and a
prospect's mindset. Does a searching mind retain more and have
greater involvement in an advertisement? How do you define an
"involvement" impression? Does this "involvement" vary from one
site to another? And how can this "involvement" be measured?
David contents that these are the sorts of questions we need to be
asking to truly measure what is happening on the Web.
"We cannot and should not end up with evaluating the Web in
terms of the traditional measurements," he said.
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