In defence of Mark Ritson: Digital metrics still have a long way to go
Squabbling over digital metrics is not going to solve the problem, writes Nico Neumann. Instead, let’s focus our energy on improving standards.
After watching the Mumbrella360 debate Are digital metrics bullshit? and observing various Linkedin rants afterwards, I spotted a behavioural trend which I think really does not help our industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfJzKPsaYfI
So what is this concerning trend?
This topic is getting tired. Can we stop giving Ritson so much attention and just get on with collaborating with each other to produce great marketing campaigns? No media channel is perfect – digital channels included. It’s easy to sit back and pick apart from afar. Get in the trenches Mark and see how you go.
LOL. Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.
100% Agree. While it’s a heated subject, no-one (person or company) has addressed Mark’s criticisms to the same extent he does – with quantifiable data. There’s been plenty of personality mixed with petty shit slinging in this debate, and one such personality has even apologised to Mark as a result.
The Mumbrella360 Digital Metrics debate featured a moderator who offered no moderation – or perhaps they were just up there as a sponsor. If I stood up and was subjected to personal attacks instead of a debate I was there to have, I would have pulled the plug. What surprised me was how willing an audience of Australia’s top media and marketing types were happy to accept and validate these attacks too.
It clearly shows the industry has a maturity and professionalism issue. You wouldn’t see, let alone accept this type of behaviour and opinion in legal, accountancy or other professional services businesses. So why as an industry do we tolerate it, and why has mumbrella assisted promoting such behaviour?
If I were Mark, I’d not offer my services to another Mumbrella debate.
TV ads can’t be considered 100% viewable if no one knows if my TV was even on.
The “…very few companies that are accredited by the MRC for sophisticated invalid traffic detection.” includes IAS, Moat, DCM, Microsoft, Sizmek, Flashtalking, Innovid and Nielsen, which are the 3rd party adservers and measurement tools for every agency and publisher group in Australia, and therefor nearly all Australian digital advertisers.
I’m with @Overit. This is boring now.
Jay, so if they are all accredited why do they produce different results.
your tv comment has nothing to do with the digital viewability as it is measured online. all tv ads are 100% viewable unless your telly is really broken.
how about you check the link before spreading wrong information: only integral ad science, adloox, double verify, whiteops and pixelate are mrc accredited for sophisticated fraud detection for all traffic (mobile and desktop)
How is a TV ad 100% viewable if my TV is on and I’m not in the room?
have you even read the section in the text on viewability and ots = opportunity to see? viewability has nothing to do with human beings seeing the ad. you need an eye tracker to get that data. you can have a 100% viewable desktop ad and havent seen it either (if you are not in the room)… same for tv of course
So TV metrics are bullshit too then, right?
I love digital analytic’s because they are factual. My GPS is Android and in real time finds the shortest route, via Google Maps. My contributions to Google Maps of places are not only rewarded, however a view count is available for me to see, so I know how engaging my reviews are. Google Trends can be utilised for a plethora of reasons and things. Here it quite correctly shows a slight increase in the ‘News’ category for ‘Mark Ritson’. Ho hum.
But how does Google measure the whole market and/r competitors. Is it a perfect measure of an imperfect subset?
Digital is good at the micro and crap at the macro.
The current articles and previous ones point out the variability of ‘view count’ and whether it means people are actually reading your blog posts vs. some search bots or people that load the page then close it because they were expecting something else…
Don’t just ‘accept’ it as fact. Test it.
I forgot the link: Voila! https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?cat=16&geo=AU&q=Mark%20Ritson
As someone who has suffered through, and presented in, 100’s of post campaign presentations in my 7 year media career, here is how they go 100% of the time:
Client: Did our TV ad run?
Agency: Yes
Client: Did it reach our reach goals?
Agency: Apparently yes.
Client: Moving on. What of Out of Home?
Agency: Here are photos that proves your posters were put where these photos where taken at the time the photos were taken.
Client: Moving on. DIGITAL! What of video completion? How many users landed on our product page? How efficiently did we drive traffic? How many clicks resulted in a sign up? Which publishers drew more engagement? Where in the purchase funnel did we see the most drop off? Which creative variation was our best performer? Which target audience didn’t perform? What was our viewability?
Agency: Here are answers to literally every question plus recommendations moving forward.
Point is, as Ringrose stated, we do have quantifiable data and we’re always learning from it. Stop trying to defend TV – TV is just TV until we can adserve it. I’m more than happy to credit Ritson’s alarm-ism for the standardization of IAS and Moat into Australian media buying. But now that they’re here and keeping Facebook honest to boot, I think it’s time Ritson and all of us moved on to better things.
This ?
The article does not seem about defending TV mate. Actually it raises TV issues too.
“we do have quantifiable data and we’re always learning from it”
How naive are you? have you ever worked with the data yourself or read the trade press recently?
“How many users came to the landing page”
You mean cookies, not users…. or better, bots?
Video completion?
Sure, if people could only define the real numbers, see Facebook errors
Clicks and sign ups?
Sorry, is this 2007? Please please measure the impact of your media channels on sales and low funnel metrics. Any marketer still requesting click through rates should be fined a penalty or send to prison
And finally, let me tell you: agencies love promoting ‘digital’ because they have the highest margins on it and can control the numbers as clients let all the data sit with then…
Take control of your own data and take things inhouse. It will be an eye opener
We’re an agency that manages client’s own CRM data. My whole job is managing data. We weaned client off CTRs but there’s value in managing funnel metrics. We identify bots (it’s about .05-1% of our 2017 data so far). We use IAS to report on Facebook actuals, not Facebook. I do like the trade press, but they tend to be a step or two behind the actual practitioners.
“Nevertheless, one of the greatest issues for the reported percentage ranges is that anyone can publish any number to get headlines, but we have no idea how a research piece was carried out and whether or not the technology is reliable”. So true with a lot of agencies these days, lol!
Great article, well done.
We have noticed a big trend in Agencies trying to defend loose, poorly defined and untrustworthy figures to try and justify the worth of their work.
Put simply, if you want to keep your agency in the job – don’t go the lazy way and open a Google Analytics or even worse… Social analytics page. Get out of the office and start talking to those customers and prove your message got through to them.
My message could very easily have reached them, but been instantly forgotten at the consideration stage because it didn’t stack up relative to my competitors ad they just saw… hence invalidating all those useless ‘views’.
We often engage the services of market researchers, pick up the phone, email and talk to people over the phone or live-chat to customers and simply ask them one of the following:
1. “How do you hear about us, what communication motivated you to purchase our products?” (remember this is recalled memory, not actual impact – so you’ll need to use other tests to validate in research)
2. Setup your sales channels with tracking links, unique offers to the channel that the customer must quote, require a special link or phone number to claim. etc.. (Setting up a special 1300 number for a campaign costs almost nothing).
3. If you are trying to address brand perceptions or other intangible emotions etc.. rather than drive a direct purchase at a point in time. Then figure out that sample size and get contacting people that could be reached in the channel area. (But isn’t that hard? Yep. So start practising and develop some repeatable processes)
*Prove it, or lose it*
Pleased to see this piece Nico. Very timely.
It’s important to recognise that Mark Ritson takes the professorial approach to all of his work and in each of the presentations I’ve seen he uses empirical research to support his views. It’s also however important to recognise that advertising effectiveness research in “old media” was rarely truly robust, with industry approaches dominated by various iterations of pre and post awareness. And don’t get me started on “readership” audits that decided the fate of gazillions of dollars of spending in magazines based on the question “which of these have you seen or read in the last six months”….
The biggest issue for the advertising industry remains being able to show clients (especially the Finance Director) that money invested in marketing drove a positive return on investment. If it helped build brand reputation, extensions, find new purchases, all brilliant.
But it’s really not a competition between “digital” and “old”. It’s about spending your clients money well in a way that helps them grow their business. And being able to measure it.
Let’s all move on.
Nice article! Let’s hope for better metrics for every marketing channel
still confused about the ad fraud numbers. even the numbers of accredited vendors seem to be all over the place
I don’t understand why we place such high stock in the accreditations of a small company in the US.
Maybe a good place to start is an localised body that understands local market dynamics providing this service.
The MRC are really only saying yes, at the time we looked, it did what it says on the tin.