Thanks for the flowers… and the valuable insight. And worry not about plugging Sq1. You’re a marketer, right? It’s what we do.

I agree that all parties – brands, agencies, technology providers, etc. – need to look beyond their immediate role, identify where the true business value lies, and define BUSINESS goals accordingly. Which is not to say that there shouldn’t be relevant and “hard” KPIs along the way (there should). But, as Chris points out below, site traffic, impressions, and clicks alone are meaningless. Nothing happens until something happens, and marketers often seem to forget this. I have worked at agencies and with clients that seemed so in love with the practice of marketing, they seemed to forget its role: SELL STUFF! I have seen websites that were beautiful to behold, cost millions of dollars, and were technical marvels. But, alas, they had no drive-to (either somebody forgot or there was just no budget left after all that video and Flash development) and thus, despite sweeping every award on offer, they were never seen by more than a few thousand folks, most of them members of the AMA, the IADAS or The One Club. Other projects would lack conversion points, a call-to-action, lead generation or CRM integration and so would fail to deliver anything more than tangible than brand exposure.

Lately, there is this obsession with data. But data in and of itself is meaningless without context, analysis and insight. Yes, the digital channel offers interaction and the ability to measure reach, engagement and much more, but this must be put into context, and must tie back to clear business and brand objectives.

I agree the industry still has a way to go to deliver on their promise. Keep fighting the good fight!

Great article and I completely agree with many of the points made. I will add that it is my opinion that the industry has missed the mark as badly as they have by aiming for the wrong target most of the time. The majority of the industry still measures by impression and click data. Agencies should focus on the end business goals as the key KPI’s in a campaign. Conversion centric campaigns that optimize towards the end conversion deliver bottom line performance that not only drive true ROI but also deliver valuable business insights. Until the industry changes it’s focus, that change will be slow to come.

Shameless plug, my agency, Sq1 (http://www.sq1agency.com) uses a Conversion Optimization methodology to help all of our clients overcome the problems mentioned in this article.

Great job.

You’re also spot on that even the smallest error in initial assumptions, recycled and amplified by each algorithmic iteration, gets compounded exponentially, leading to campaigns that drift further and further afield without human intervention. It’s not unlike the trajectory of a projectile flying several miles, where even a slight deviation from the ideal flight path near the point of launch gets amplified along the flight path and will mean that it will be hundreds of yards off-target at impact.

Moreover, while automated programs are great at recognizing patterns (often incorrectly) and shifting spend accordingly, they lack intuition, context and instinct (what we commonly refer to as “common sense”). This is why it’s crucial to have experienced marketers review campaign performance at regular, frequent intervals and adapt KPIs that go beyond impressions and click-through and include downstream measurements like attributable conversions, lift in sales, etc. Unfortunately, many advertisers and media agencies trust programmatic buying too much and treat them as “fire and forget” systems that self-adjust.

As to you still being targeted by your B-School, perhaps you should give them (or their agency) a quick primer on this topic and show them the error of their ways. I’m sure they would knock a couple of grand off the price of your second MBA in return.

Anyone that has gone deep into any website’s analytics can tell you, there is a wide varying degree of values of clicks, visit, conversions, or any other metric for that matter. That’s why the value of a “user” has decreased significantly in my mind. How many email addresses do you use? How many people use your primary IP address? What about the browser on your computer? The problem is that 1 small incorrect assumption made by the algorithm is multiplied a million fold. Every platform is analyzing the same data and creating outputs based on their personal assumptions they use in their algorithm. They then put the altered (and a little more incorrect) data back into the system, allowing it to churn into perpetuity. For example, I decided to attend my MBA school 5 years ago and probably clicked “apply” somewhere back then. Well 5 tears later I’m still getting re-targeted for the school, whom I’ve already given thousands of dollars to! They’ve probably wasted thousands of impressions on me after I enrolled.

The only way to really know what your data is telling you is to think behind the metrics. Think about who is doing the clicking and why they are doing it. People use the Internet as a tool to find information, simply give them what they are looking for. Everything else is just noise, inefficiencies, and spam.

And as an aside, I regularly flush & dump my browsing history, cache and cookies. So as not to expose other users of my device to boring ad-tech articles and advertising.

And I know I need to continue to work at “getting it,” your 12 year old daughter is coming after my job!