KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog

RIP CPM

It's not every Sunday morning that I advocate killing off an industry icon, but this is a movement that I think we all need to get behind Let’s Kill The CPM.

Essentially what Shelby Bonnie is advocating is the same thing I've been saying for the past three years -- EYEBALL are irrelevant and a bad metric.

Signs of hope in the PR world -- will we someday run the world?

How PR Chiefs Shift Toward Center of Marketing Departments - Advertising Age - CMO Strategy.

What's your Twitter ROI? How to measure social media payoff

Looking for examples of good social media ROI measurement? Read this

What's your Twitter ROI? How to measure social media payoff.

Yo World -- its Metrics Time!

A few days ago, Adobe announced that it would purchase Omniture,
bringing its powerful analytics to people who design websites and other online content. Essentially making every online move you make measureable. Today we learn that Facebook is going to provide Ad Data to Nielsen --
another move to make the ubiquitous social network more measurable.

Clearly,analytophilia is setting in in corporate america, making measurement if not cool, at least highly desirable. But what I liked best about the Facebook announcement is how they're actually going to get the data they'll provide to Nielsen? SURVEYs -- no high tech mumbo jumbo, no quasi-scientific computer generated numbers, they're going to ASK the users. What a concept! Okay, you can let your collective breaths out now.. Its old tech, but it still works.

Analytophilia makes me want to go to "Measure NOT Land"

Years ago, after a particularly grueling week of anlaylzing and reporting on a dozen or so clients, I declared that I was leaving and going to "Measure Not Land"  -- a place where everyone does anything they feel like doing "just cuz" and "gut feeling" was the law of the land. Alexandra Samuel has a much more realistic and practical answer
in her brilliant piece Scoring with Social Media: 6 Tips for Using Analytics .

Another bombshell hits the measurement space

It took me a minute or two to understand the logic behind the news that Adobe was going to to acquire Omniture,
but Forester's Suresh Vittal's quote in this analysis of the move, brought it home. "By embedding measurement into content," Vittal says, "you can compare apples to apples. Eyeballs and impressions shouldn't be the only deciding factor for where to place advertising. [Companies] should start thinking about very value-based metrics on the eyeballs." Even if a Web site sees fewer visitors, he says, each of the customers who do reach the site may be more valuable. "It helps to think about a new standard," Vittal says, "one around audience evaluation more than measurement."
As I keep telling myself, "you're never wrong, you're just early."   I reached the same conclusion as Vittal did when I attended my first e-Metrics conference and heard what Omniture was doing, and saw the type and nature of data it was providing to its customers. You can get much of the same data from Google Analytics -- but the difference is, the people that are actually PAYING for that data, seem to use it more effectively. If this generation of PR and communications professionals wants to succeed, they should definitely be watching what happens with this merger.

Between P&G and PRSA, the conversation has GOT to change

I was privileged to be part of  PRSA's standard-setting effort . So would LOVE to hear your comments

One small step for P&G, One HUGE step for our profession

As I look at the heap of advertising inserts cluttering up the daily newspaper box outside my door, and marvel at my recycling bin full of direct mail detritus,
I keep chuckling at the notion that some media company somewhere sold some poor sucker those "eyeballs" on a promise that they might actually do something. NOT! I'm constantly astounded that impressions and eyeballs still carry as much weight with advertisers as they do. Or did.

With today's announcement that P&G will pay publishers based on online engagement, it's a whole new ballgame. Although few would admit it, most of us have known for years that the vast majority of those "eyeballs" we claim to reach aren't even glancing at most of the stuff we shovel at them.  Most good marketers have known in their hearts that counting eyeballs in an era of engagement, interaction and word of mouth is a complete waste of time. I personally have longed for the day when CEOs and CMOs begin to question the numbers behind those  HITS, eyeballs and AVE numbers and question the basis for those metrics. With today's annoucement, they could start any time. Because where P&G goes, there goes the industry.

Back in the 60s, it was P&G that called for accurate TV metrics, and thus was born Neilsen. In the 90s they were the first (with my help) to understand how PR impacted sales and later made its PRevaluate integral to its Marketing Mix Model.Consumer brands everywhere now incorporate both PR and word of mouth into their models.

But today is especially sweet for those of us who have been ranting about how counting eyeballs and GRPs no longer works in the social media environment. Why count eyeballs, and AVEs, I've argued for years, when you can count engagement, and clickthrus and sales?

Why indeed? Let the old-line media and marketing folks continue to gnash their teeth (I can hear them whinging from here) about how to justify their existence in this new weird wild wonderful world, while we go about engaging influencers in conversations and measuring the return on investment in terms of lower costs and greater profits.

So, thank you good folks at P&G for making my life a WHOLE lot easier. AND if you want to know how to actually implement measurement in this new environment, come to my workshop October 2nd in NYC, or November 9th in San Diego and I'll give you all the answers.

Okay, readers, take Joe up on his challenge

Joe Marchese has thrown down the gauntlet in a brilliant challenge to everyone involved in social media. Show him that it works, and that it works better than traditional media. I look forward to lots of great case studies from this one.

In case you missed it.. I think we all need a new point of view

This was my guest post at Brian Solis' blog -- my premise is that it's time for us all to rethink how we approach both communications and measurement