"ABC sales president Mike Shaw said today that he would go into upfront negotiations offering advertisers a new tool, the Advertising Value Index, a formula that can be used to determine the effectiveness of their advertising on the network." source: Adweek
Interesting!!! A few weeks back I issued this request for help in thinking this through to my B2B Marcom team:
In my quest to derive greater value-added from Indium's media network, I would like you to ask these questions of every media we work with. I guess that this might come off as quite weird, even threatening, to some media. Can you help me rework this so it does the intended job, in a nice way?
Rick
* What is your BEST vehicle (media) with regard to advertiser performance? (metric: customer engagement, eg. click-thru, email, etc.)
* Within all of your various media (daily e-letter, print publication, website, virtual events, etc.) list the top 3 performing paid-for spots (eg. banner ad top of left-hand skyscraper, news-like teaser ad - center column, survey, etc.) (metric: click-thru, email, etc.)
* Within all of your various media (daily e-letter, print publication, website, virtual events, etc.) list the top performing free spots (eg. white paper, editorial, interview, etc.) (metric: click-thru, email, etc.)
* For each of your media, which days of the week do you receive the best performance? (metric: customer engagement, eg. click-thru, email, etc.)
* For all of these performance metrics, please provide your average performance rate (eg. CTR average is 2.7%, emails sent is 11/ad, etc.)
* If you have an email media product:
* do you segment your database to allow for more targeted messaging?
* How many subscribers do you have?
* What is the geographic breakdown of your subscriber base?
* If you have a (internally) searchable website media product, please provide a list of the top searched terms/phrases.
* If you offer a website:
* which search engine (Google, Yahoo, Baidu, etc.) is the source of most of your externally-searched visits? (list by per centage)
* how many visits do you receive per week?
* How many distinct visitors do you receive per week?
* How many individuals subscribe to your RSS feed?
* Please provide the geographic breakdown of your audience.
* If you offer an online community (chat, bulletin board service, etc.):
* How many members do you have?
* How many searches of the community site are performed per week?
* What are the top search topics?
* How many visits/sessions do you receive per week?
* How many distinct visitors do you receive per week?
* How many individuals subscribe to your community's RSS feed?
* Please provide the geographic breakdown of your audience.
* If you offer online video:
* Are the videos tagged for search purposes?
* If searchable, please provide statistics on search activity.
* Do you offer an RSS-type subscription service?
I fully expect the following reactions:
- "Wow! Good questions. I don't know if I can answer them all, but I will do my best."
- "Go to hell!"
- "Hey, some of these don't apply. Is it OK if I just answer those that make sense for me?
In a previous post, I wrote the following (about a meeting I had with publishers as part of my role on the American Business Media Advisory Board):
We eventually reached a point where it seems like a new engagement protocol might be in order. Here's why: clients commented that media sales people frequently offer little more than "more ad space" and "cheaper ad space" when clients are actually seeking greater value. A couple of us made it clear that we are willing to PAY for such value. Media management people commented that they are disappointed when their sales team simply tries to sell space when management knows that their media organization is sitting on a mountain of rich data. Media representatives told us that there is a lot of value to be delivered. For example, they can often richly describe and differentiate subscribers far beyond the basic BPA-type data of which we are all aware.
So, we're driving at the some point. And, for a long while now, I've been wondering why these media sales people haven't been offering this info proactively. It seems that ABC is now on top of it.
I'd like to hear from you. Am I on the right track? Have I gone too far? Not far enough? What else is out there for us to use?
I'd LOVE to hear from MY media partners on this.
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