ComScore released another solid piece of work yesterday.
As readers of this page will remember, comScore has been outspoken on the failings of the ubiquitous click as a metric. Some of that in this report, but much more as well. From my perspective, the most interesting thread in the report ties together a couple of their numbered points.
First, as comScore correctly points out, cookie-deletion creates real problems for cookie-based targeting and measurement approaches. comScore data shows that 30% of all US internet users delete their cookies monthly or more often. Furthermore, many computers see routine use by multiple users. These factors create “noise” in targeting that often results in much lower true composition against the target than is claimed or described. Consumers’ ever-growing concern about privacy will only make this worse. Probably much worse. More evidence (if any was needed) that measurement of campaign impacts against meaningful metrics is critical – especially when a targeting approach sounds like magic.
Secondly, comScore highlights the tradeoff between targeting and scale. This tradeoff is intuitively obvious, but often overlooked. Equally often, credulous buyers willingly suspend disbelief in favor of a nice-sounding pitch.
Consider the example of one of our clients, with a large online footprint of some 25 million accounts. Of these 25M, this client has actionable cookies on <5M, with data of varying depths and value (and all of these cookies, of course, are subject to the churn challenge presented above). So this client can (and does) employ the most sophisticated targeting and re-targeting approaches on all of these 5M customers. But what about the other 20M customers they can’t talk to this way? What about the 100M adults that aren’t customers yet? 30-spots?
For the online advertising to grow to its full potential (and necessary size as “offline” media erodes), we must more fully develop a broader approach to complement our myriad fine targeting approaches.
Sometimes it is best to fish with a hook, other times with a net. As an industry we need a good supply of both.
Look for more on this topic in subsequent posts, but wanted to make sure to call out comScore’s work while it was fresh. Worth a read.
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