Evaluating the Performance of Media Vehicles
Brand communication has little chance to be effective if no one sees it. That is why
analyzing the effectiveness of the media plan is another important part of campaign
evaluation.
Media Optimization
When a brand manager optimizes the mix of IMC tools used, the resulting brand
perception becomes stronger. One of the biggest challenges in media planning is
media efficiency – that is, getting the most out of your money invested. The goal
of media optimization is to optimize the budget – that is, to get the most impact
possible with the least expenditure of money.
Media planners operate with computer models of media optimization that are used
in making decisions about media selection, scheduling, and weights. Because
models are always theoretical, actual performance of a media plan must be
compared with the results projected by model.
Evaluating Exposure
For major campaigns, agencies do post-buy analyses, which involve checking the
media plan against the performance of each media vehicle.
Verifying audience measurement estimates is a challenge. As media
choicesbecome more and more complex, media planners are being asked to prove
the wisdom of their recommendations in areas where the data they use are
sometimes suspect or unreliable, particularly if there are problems with the media
measurement companies’ formulas and reporting systems.
Vehicle-by-Vehicle Evaluation
To better understand the obstacles encountered in media evaluation, we will first look at a
few areas where media performance is hardest to estimate: out-of-home media, digital
media, and alternative media.
Out-of-Home Media
Accurately measuring the audience for outdoor advertising is challenging.
Although traffic counts can be gathered, the problem is that traffic does not equal
exposure.
To address this issue, Traffic Audit Bureau for Media Measurement, Inc., has
created the TAB visibility research program, which uses eye-tracking technology
to determine how a billboard’s format and angle to the road affect the likelihood
that it will be noticed. It even takes into account the speed limits of the roads on
which the signs have been placed.
Digital Media
It used to be the case that digital tracking was tough and offline tracking was
stronger in showing the relationship between IMC spending and results. Today,
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however, this has changed, as web analytic firms are developing much more
sophisticated evaluation programs.
Alternative Media
Alternative media programs, such as word-of-mouth, social media, and guerilla
marketing campaigns are even harder to evaluate, and media planners continue to
search for reliable indicators of exposure numbers that equate to the performance
measures for traditional media.
Newspaper Readership Measurement
For newspapers and other traditional media, assessment is more straightforward.
Newspapers measure their audiences in two ways: circulation, or number of
subscribers, and readership, or number of readers. These same measures are
revisited in post-campaign evaluation.
Magazine Readership Measurement
Magazine rates are based on guaranteed circulation and total audience. Post
campaign evaluation requires verification of the circulation of magazines, along
with the demographic and psychographic characteristics of specific readers. MRI
verifies readership for many popular national and regional magazines, and covers
readership demographics, psychographics, and product use.
Measuring the Broadcast Audience
A station’s coverage is revisited to ensure that the medium delivered. For
television, Nielsen data is used. Ratings, along with shares, households using
televisions, and gross impressions are revisited so that a comparison of anticipated
and actual audience delivery can be conducted.
IMC Campaign Evaluation Challenges
The major challenge in overall IMC program evaluation is to pull everything
together and look at the big picture of campaign performance. As companies
move from solely an evaluation mindset that considers measures such as
impressions to one that also looks closely at conversion rates and consumer
engagement, they are getting closer to a true measure of overarching campaign
success.
Which metrics companies choose to combine for evaluation and how those
metrics are weighted with regard to their individual importance differs from brand
to brand and remains an area of intense debate.
Measuring ROI
Advertisers continue to improve how they measure brand communication ROI,
which compares the cost of creating and running brand communication to the
revenue it generates. However, since the dollar impact of brand communication is
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difficult to measure, so is the cost-to-sales ratio. ROI is much easier to calculate
for sales promotions and direct marketing.
One question related to ROI is this: How much spending is too much? That is,
how do you determine whether you are overadvertising or underadvertising? The
best way to answer this question is through the use of test marketing.
A University of Southern California professor reminds us that advertising not only
has instantaneous effects (the consumer responds immediately) but also
carryover effects (delayed effects.) Any evaluation of campaign effectiveness
needs to be able to track both types of effects over times.
The Synergy Problem
Another challenge with evaluating campaigns, particularly IMC campaigns, is
estimating the impact of synergy. Intuitively we know that multichannel
communication with messages that reinforce and build on one another will have
more impact than single messages from single sources; however, that can be
difficult to prove.
If the campaign planning is well integrated, which means each specialty area
cooperates with all the others in message design, delivery, and timing, there
should be a synergistic effect. This means that the overall results are greater than
the sum of the individual functional areas if used separately.
A number of studies have attempted to evaluate IMC impact by comparing
campaigns that use two or three tools to see what is gained when more message
sources are added to the mix. Studies of both the platforms and components of
IMC are beginning to tease out the effects of synergy, but they are a long way
from evaluating the effects of a total communication program.
A final complication in evaluating programs is the need to consider other
messages and contact points beyond the brand campaign. Brand experiences such
as those involved with customer service and word-of-mouth may be even more
important than the planned communication campaign. The APrincipled Practice
feature in this chapter demonstrates how these unconventional message effects
can have important impact on the brand.
In the APrincipled Practice feature, its author makes three salient points:
o 1) Key management decisions count for a lot. No amount of promotion hype
can compensate for an inferior product offering.
o2) Social media cannot be ignored or taken lightly. To disregard the impact of
social media is to make a huge management error.
o 3) Managing the brand involves more than just having a good promotion
strategy. Guarding the brand as well as the image of the firm generally
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involves an integrated management strategy in which promotions are called
upon to deliver specific objectives.
Digital Challenges
There are several challenges marketers face when attempting to capture the
success of digital marketing communication efforts. First, marketers often
want to skip straight to digital measurement without having a clear sense of
their business objectives.
Second, marketers must develop the right digital key performance
indicators, which tell whether or not digital communications are driving the
business toward success. This measure can be either direct or indirect, but
either way, success indicators must be succinctly defined.
Finally, digital communication evaluation must be phrased in a way and in a
language that broader business leaders can understand.
International Challenges
International brand communication is difficult to evaluate because of market differences (e.g.,
language, laws, and cultural norms) and the acceptability of various research tools. There may also
be incompatibilities among various measurement systems and data analysis techniques that make
it difficult to compare the data from one market with similar data from another market. An
international evaluation program for advertising should focus, at least initially, on pretesting
because unfamiliarity with different cultures, languages, and consumer behaviors can result in
major miscalculations. Pretesting helps the advertiser correct major problems before
miscommunication occurs.
After a campaign has concluded, international evaluation remains critical yet difficult. It can be
complicated by the fact that different countries may have had very different starting points
(pre-campaign measurements) with regard to brand awareness and affinity. Also in different
countries, consumers approach rating scales differently. A final challenge lies in the fundamental
communication challenges that all multinational companies experience in getting managers across
countries ‘on the same page.’
Back to the Big Picture: Did the Campaign Work?
The ultimate measure of campaign performance is the answer to one seemingly simple
question: Did the campaign achieve the objectives that were set at the very beginning of
the planning process?
Connecting the Dots
Competent brand communication managers return to the campaign objectives, and
then adequately and realistically measure the campaign’s performance against
those objectives. An example of how UPS successfully faced this challenge is
discussed in detail in this chapter.
Bringing It All Together
Beyond connecting the objectives to the measurements, advertisers continue to
search for methods that will bring all the metrics together and efficiently and
effectively evaluate brand communication effectiveness.
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Ultimately, the goal is to arrive at holistic, cross-functional metrics that are
relevant for integrated communication.Many pieces are still missing in the
evaluation of complex IMC programs. Research think tanks are struggling to find
better ways to measure consumers’ emotional connections to brands and brands’
relationships with their customers and how those connections and relationships
are affected by various types of marketing communication messages.
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