Today's advertising: it's all about measurement

Here at Blackfriars, we have research data that says that more than two-thirds of US businesses now measure their marketing results in some objective way. That trend is now starting to invade the marketing activity that consumes the lion's share of marketing budgets: advertising. Today's Wall Street Journal has a great article on TV ads that drive people to calls to action that will allow advertisers to measure the ad's impact. The end of the article gives some insights to the ways leading advertisers are doing measurement:

A major force driving the new form is marketers' desire to know who and how many people it is reaching with a particular spot. Consumers responding to an ordinary TV ad -- going to the store, buying the product -- can't necessarily be tracked. But visitors who make the phone call to request a DVD or visit the Web site can be traced to the ad that invited them to do so.

Advertisers' desire to get concrete results from advertising is paramount these days, says John Freeland, a managing partner at Accenture, who advises clients on marketing issues. "Do they focus on marketing as a management science, or do they treat it as an art form?" he asks. "That stuff is measurable."

At Colgate, executives have been tracking the number of visits to the Web site, the duration of the visits and the redemption rate of offers, says a spokeswoman. Papa John's is able "to track our Internet orders on an hourly basis, really down to the minute, and we are able to track those back to our national TV schedule," says Jim Ensign, the company's senior director of media services.