Display + Search

Measurement.   Better measurement is critical to display advertising being managed like search.  Google this week announced the launch of an exciting new tool that will allow display marketers to better measure their results.

The product is called Campaign Insights.  It sounds pretty slick.  Basically, they are taking information on the ads consumers have seen and matching it up, somehow,  with searches consumers with the Google Toolbar make.  Now unless it’s magic, which is entirely possible, there has to be some sort of common key to enable Google to match the ad to the search – so I guess that means the toolbar is recording the ads we’re seeing (or the ad is recording a toolbar ID of some sort).  Doesn’t scare me but I wonder what the privacy hounds are thinking about this.

Regardless of how it’s done, receiving this data easily and in a timely fashion should accelerate investment in display advertising.  Numerous studies show display impacts search.  But display attribution to consumer search during a campaign is pretty ad hoc.  Analysts pore over keyword traffic in analytics reports to try to see if an increase occurred when a display campaign is launched or changed.  Despite hard work by smart people – the results of this type of analysis are rarely conclusive in either direction.  Dynamic Logic brand studies are done to show lift in awareness, but they are useless for optimization because the results come weeks after the campaign. Plus they are expensive, difficult to execute, publishers hate them, and I have to believe that people who fill out DL studies are a unique lot.

This tool should give the display marketer the ability to analyze and make quick decisions to impact the campaign now.  Suddenly a marketer may be able to justify much higher CPMs in a display buy because they can directly attribute that spend to increased searches.

Google’s continued push into Display is pretty impressive.  Display is not like search in that it cannot be dominated based purely on consumer habit.  Seriously, I’ve tried to use Bing and it’s hard to get out of the habit of going to Google.com to search.  So to rule Display, Google is providing marketers with all the tools necessary to make buying display advertising as simple, easy and effective as buying search.  The Doubleclick Exchange is one piece, Campaign Insights is another. More is down the pike.

If I were Dynamic Logic, I’d be a little worried right now.   DL’s primary value is to help advertisers prove value in display advertising investment and Campaign Insights seems to make that much easier and cheaper.  Hmm, yeah, I’ll take Campaign Insights plus a Vizu study both providing me real-time results over a DL study that I’ll get a month after the campaign.  Not much of a decision there.

I’m hoping to get a demo of Campaign Insights in the next few weeks – shout if you can give me one.

Finally, while my daughter is a dinosaur for halloween, I am going to dress up as what Google knows about us. Boo!!