“Some suggest there is a tendency to gloss over the problems of online advertising. As Ryan Kangisser, a partner at MediaSense, says: “”I don’t think online advertising is broken, but I would say it is suffering from an image problem.”
He believes there is a “”conspiracy of silence”” in the industry about the poor performance of digital display advertising but is hopeful that new approaches to measuring effectiveness and a new look at performance metrics will bring greater honesty to the discussion.
Kangisser points out that brands and agencies are just starting to get to grips with the need for visibility tracking and attribution modelling – assessing the effects of a wide range of online and offline advertising on a purchase – to replace old-fashioned measures such as CTRs and last-click attribution. The rising importance of attribution modelling is evident in Google’s acquisition of Adometry and AOL’s purchase of Convertro, both in May.
But the industry may not like what these new measures show. “”There is a lot of fear about what the reality is behind those results,”” Kangisser suggests.
That said, getting a clearer view of online ad performance “”would show it in a better light””, he says: “”If you discount ads that were never seen, your engagement rates will dramatically improve.””