by Emily Riley
Major players are showing signs that marketers are starting to spend more online. Yahoo recently made public remarks that they’re optimistic that advertising revenue will start to increase soon. If we do see a near term increase in spending (Forrester is forecasting general growth in the industry over the next 5 years) then it is probably a combination of things including a turn in the economy and the approaching 4th quarter, typically the biggest quarter for ad spending.
If you are in the fortunate position to have a planned increase in your marketing budget, you are probably trying to figure out where to spend the money. Now is the perfect time to start using attribution to help you make that decision. I’m currently deep in the middle of a Wave to look at the different attribution vendors out there, which will be out in early Q4. In the mean time, I highly recommend starting to look at what problems attribution can solve for you. Attribution is a form of measurement that will allow you to understand which media placements move the needle from the early funnel branding all the way down to a conversion or sale. If you want a richer definition, check out a past attribution report I wrote that describes it in more detail.
Hopefully, interactive marketing spending does indeed start to increase in the near term. During the downturn, we’ve heard more talk about the importance of measurement and ROI in the past year than ever before, and I have a fear that the pendulum is about to swing away from these things. Forrester predicts that brand marketing will be a big part of interactive marketing spending increases in the coming years, and of course social marketing will be part of that. But there is no reason why “measurement” and “ROI” need to be sacrificed for these things to happen. By including attribution as part of your plans, you can have the best of both worlds.
