The Devil's in the Analytics

Jon Njos

Media Director / Partner, Stanton & Everybody Advertising + Design

For almost 3 years, we have been executing digital web campaigns for our clients either as a stand-alone media execution or in combination with other media efforts, like TV & radio.

It’s been fascinating to watch consumer behavior unfold with the tally of impressions delivered, click-throughs and what the results are based on that data. While studying the results and licking our “chops” everyday to see the resulting numbers grow and grow, there was an element about these campaigns we overlooked. The element of good, old-fashioned, exposure. Just like traditional advertising, digital banner campaigns achieve the same results……exposure to the message, advancing the brand, and accumulating impressions. The other analytics are gravy.

Many times when a campaign is set up, we have to guess what we want to track as a conversion, which will equal the acquisition of a lead from an email request or a phone call. But, that cagey consumer will ultimately do what THEY want and not what you want. We have found with some of our campaigns, the intended response of emailing or calling was bypassed and the consumer showed up at the retail site. In person. A direct result of the exposure to the banner ads without the tracking pixel. The other supporting element of this is the measurement of “View-Throughs.” We were so involved with tracking click-throughs, we didn’t realize that sometimes people need to come back later because they can’t spend the time at the moment to look at your web site. I refer to it as putting a mental sticky-note on the brain and going to your web site another day. View-Through tracking enables us to see that a visitor to your web site was previously exposed to your banner ad, did NOT click on it, but went to your web site later by typing in the direct URL address. Many times the View-Throughs will outnumber the click-throughs.

That’s why I say the Devil’s in the analytics because agencies and clients get so caught up in them that they can’t let campaigns run the course and let consumers do what they do. When assessing analytics, you have to look at cumulative activity and not one particular element. The media and advertising world is becoming a victim of its own access to intense data and research. So much so, that we are creating a monster by trying to define things too thinly. We certainly always want to effectively target advertising and decrease waste as much as possible, but over-analyzing things can create way too much work and actually hinder your campaign efforts. That’s why we try to work with our clients at the beginning of a campaign and layout what we hope to achieve, what we want to track and how we will optimize things as the campaign progresses.