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.

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