IAB Social Media Ad Metrics: A Weird Media Science and Common Sense Approach
The IAB released its Social Media Ad Metrics report earlier this month. It’s a mixture of Weird Media Scientology and a much needed dose of common sense on how we measure value and benefit in Social Media and Online PR.
Common sense is delivered via a bunch of sensible quantitative metrics for measuring Social Media effectiveness, broadly around notions of traffic acquisition, conversions and ‘coverage’. The report breaks this down by result: traffic measurements, actions, conversation, relevancy, credibility, and interactions – all of which can be used, matrix-style, to assess whether or not a campaign is sticking or gaining play. This tool set will give clients in every sector a sensible view of how to measure their returns.
Importantly, the report doesn’t provide guidance on softer brand benefits like sentiment or share of voice, both of which can be broadly viewed as comparative exercises, and are now being served by a variety of paid for monitoring tools.
As we’ve described elsewhere, C&M thinks this distinction is important, and one that speaks to a rather muddled view of the marketing possibilities that Social Media can provide.
In short, when it comes to planning Social Media campaigns, we ought to be asking not what Social Media can do for us but what we want to be doing in the first place.
Social Media is, without doubt, creating a mass of exciting opportunities to interact with consumers, listen, learn and influence. But tactically speaking I find many people still blinded by the glamour of it all and not focused enough on objectives.
‘Doing a Facebook’ doesn’t constitute a well conceived campaign that can be measured. Driving awareness, acquisitions and conversions does. As does using Social Media for learning and education.
The IAB metrics provide us with some sensible ideas for measuring tangible outcomes, and I applaud them. At C&M we use them all the time – we generally get paid when we drive signups, purchases, etc.
But there’s work to be done on the rest of it. Sentiment analysis and brand monitoring isn’t yet a perfect science with tools like Brandwatch, Radian6, Social Radar and Attentio. Pretty pictures aside, they provide value as a comparative benchmark amongst brands but they need to sharpen up in terms of the quality of their data sets. We find that manual analysis is often more effective (if more expensive).
(Measurement on this score is, however, being driven by the Social Media industry itself in the shape of initiatives like MeasurementCamp…. and we agencies need to be doing more to establish the tools and frameworks for it.)
From C&M’s point of view, the best approach to measurement is driven by objectives. Different outcomes should be driven by different metrics. Broadly speaking, we divide these into four areas:
- Acquisition and conversions (campaign-style work): for which the IAB report provides a great template
- Influencer discovery (establishing which parts of the Interweb we should be tuning into and working with): analysis of who’s saying what, and which things we should care for, as a platform for our work
- Brand monitoring and conversation (listening and interacting): understanding what’s being said about a brand, in a fast, actionable format
- Broader activities that touch on other non-traditional marketing areas such as Customer Support and Sales: for example, using Social Media for sales prospect intelligence in B2B environments and managing service and support enquiries
Each of these objectives is fundamentally different. The IAB metrics, naturally, speak to the first. For the others there’s no silver bullet, but much of it is obvious. Support costs can be measured. Lead nurturing can be assessed in terms of deal closure time. Conversations can be tracked and charted around notions of sentiment, and influence can be established in some very tangible, quantitative and Google-like ways (eg backlinkage. followings, relevancy and PageRank).
Which leads me to IAB’s Weird Media Science…
Of the objectives described above, only the first fits well within a ‘Media’ mentality. In a nutshell, it’s a mistake to assess the value of Social Media purely in terms of bottom line Media spend measurement. This mindset is born of the Media Buyer and sits nicely within their comfort zone, but it’s not the only fruit.
The IAB report intro nicely summerises the approach:
This kind of assessment makes my skin crawl and suggests that the IAB still has a long way to go if its to grasp the full potential of all this ‘Social’ stuff. In short, Social Media isn’t really Media and the language the IAB uses to describe it betrays its heritage and its need to place Social Media in a convenient box that doesn’t require too much thinking on the part of Marketing Managers.
Whilst the world needs to know that Social Media has a ‘participatory element where an individual not only receives information but has the ability to take part in [it],’ its real value can only really be understood by people brave enough to imagine a Media-free environment where the most important currency isn’t a brute (transmit and receive) transaction between consumer and billboard, but in the myriad of conversations, communities and dialogues that are occurring with or without the help of a Media spend. And this is the stuff we need to be getting our arms around…
In my view, this type of measurement is unlikely to come from the Advertising fraternity: they’re too busy trying to build another microsite and/or TV spot. But more on this later….
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Amber Naslund
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Roger Warner
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Robin Grant, We Are Social
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