Online engagement

Day two of MAP 2009 opened with a session from Jason Ryan, from iCrossing, on measuring search and social media. Overnight snowstorms stopped me from catching this in person, but WARC trailed his presentation in a preview paper published just prior to the conference.

How Channel 4 and iCrossing engaged online consumers reports on how UK public service broadcaster, Channel 4, engaged a young audience with an educational message via a digital strategy. In addition to detailing the measurement approach and metrics used by iCrossing to evaluate the campaign, it includes many onward links to other papers detailing successful digital and viral initiatives.

Behavioural targeting

I did make it for the start of the second session on behavioural targeting, presented by Mike Read from Comscore, billed as offering new insights into online behaviour that are driving successful marketing and trading strategies.

The first issue was that of cookie deletion, which has reached levels of around 30%. Moreover, cookies are being removed an average of four times a month, presenting a real problem for reporting as it leads to an over-statement of unique audiences by 2.5 times. This in turn results in an overstatement of reach, but an understatement of frequency, which itself leads to an understatement of campaign ROI.

There has also been a decline in online ad click-through rates, with Comscore reporting rates of less than 0.1% in 2008. The company believes we wrong to be using click-through rates as a measurement for display ads because, whilst they capture direct response campaigns, brand building effects are not