Advertising Industry Trade Groups Come Together to Make Brand Measurement a Priority Online
March 1, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and the 4As (American Association of Advertising Agencies) announced this week at the IAB’s Annual Meeting that they have joined forces to finally make sense of online brand measurement. It’s clear that the broader media and marketing community recognizes that if brand advertising can’t safely follow consumers online through successful planning, buying and measurement then the opportunity represented by new media, and the chance to connect with digital generations, now and in the future, will pass them by with whatever undeterminable affect on the future of the world’s major marketers.
Not that that was ever going to happen. Even in the darkest days of the early internet when the idea of one-to-one, risk free advertising was being spooned into the hookahs of the industry was the “end of branding” a plausible reality. Brands are people. People are brands. To posit the end of branding would be to posit the end of the consumer. Not likely. Not yet.
Ergo, the announcement by the chief marketing councils that brand measurement will be brought forth online, or else, is the signal that brands and branding are off the ropes, making it likely – and just write this down, you can check back on the claim later – that the internet will usher in a new era of marketing intuition and seat-of-the-pants decision-making. Measurement, after all, is the net under the performance, not the performance. If you follow my meaning.
