Tales From the Digital Side

This presentation is a bit long, but very interesting. A must see if you look at web analytics data.

This is great news! Google’s content/ad network that allows advertisers to run banners across many publishers has been a very consistent sources of resume submissions in many media campaigns. Up until now though, we were not able to track impressions level data and could only tracking resume submissions that were made after someone clicked on an ad. We’ll now be able to track those that see the ad, but don’t click , or post-impressions resume submissions (post-impressions resume submissions on average account for 60-70% of all resume submissions).

I ain’t measuring it no more! I know, You probably just got comfortable with using it to compare your digital campaigns. But the truth is, click-through rate (CTR) has little to do with the effectiveness of your campaign. If it is your sole measurement of your campaigns, you are probably not making the best decisions. Read the rest of this entry »

Although many employers are just barely beginning to experiment with the standard gif banner ad (the ones that just animates - no audio, video, expansion, etc), the rest of the interactive industry has been using a lot of rich media. A rich media ad is a banner ad that incorporates video, audio, expansion, data capture, games, polls, etc. These ads are more engaging for users and can offer a stronger branding experience than a standard gif. Read the rest of this entry »

For most of my career, I’ve been challenged and/or heckled by someone asking/stating “Come on, those banners don’t work?!” or “Well, I never click on banners”. And I have steadfastedly stood by my graphic ad friends, because they do add value.

I’m not alone anymore! According to research published in the Journal of Consumer Research and more understandably discussed in an article by Science Daily, banner ads have an effect, even if you don’t notice them. Even when people cannot recall the ad, the repeated exposure to the ad leads to familiarity and that leads to positive feelings. The relationship between exposure and positive feelings is a direct one, with positive feelings increasing as exposure increased. This supports the value of using banner ads as part of your digitial branding strategy. Read the rest of this entry »

comScore just released new metrics for measuring user engagement. I think this is awesome. For years, engagement has been a hard thing to determine. Many sites have used strategies to inflate traffic numbers by “buying” traffic from ad networks and affiliate programs, but the quality of the traffic was very low. Those users arrived at the site and then immediately left, but still counted as a visit. Also, with technologies like AJAX, the “visit” and the “page view” don’t tell enough of the story.

The changes has produced some interesting results. Yahoo’s Network remained on top with the most unique visitors and also came out on top of the new metric, average visits per visitor. But other than that - there were a lot of interesting differences to note.
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