Actions or Audience?
Compared with a year ago, which are you buying (or selling) MORE frequently, LESS frequently, or about the SAME?
- ACTIONS? – such as cost per action, acquisition, click, lead, order, etc.
- AUDIENCE? – behavioral segments, demographic targets, etc.
Ask any buyer or seller and you’ll hear variations on familiar themes.
For example, an analytics director for an ad agency in London who is buying actions less frequently says there are simply “too many conversion attribution challenges and distractions.” On the other hand, this buyer finds that “data and targeting are getting damned interesting, and the results are justifying greater investments.”
Meantime a counterpart at a US agency says, “Actions are prominent for us because everything is an action – a visit to a website, even if they don’t click, can be tracked and measured. Clicks, obviously, are actions. Sweepstakes, call center (pay per call), orders, conversions, leads, etc. are always a part of my goals. That is how I plan. Not to an audience, but to an action – and who is most likely to perform that action. Not take an audience and then try to fit the action to the person. THAT is the difference between marketing offline and marketing online.”
Will actions prevail, or will audience? Or are the lines between branding goals and metrics and direct response blurring into the long-sought new entity – branded response?
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