I recently read an article on Nielsen’s blog roll about the effectiveness of online advertising, by Jon Gibbs.  It argued that we haven’t fully developed a method to find if our online advertisements are reaching our target demographic.  When a user clicks on an online ad are they trying to locate a specific company or product through a search engine?  Are they clicking on a few ads before they find what they want, or are they instantly clicking on the product in their desired search?  I have received several irate calls in the past couple weeks from users who could not access a particular site, and they know it should be open for them to do business.  After researching where they were going, it became evident that they were clicking on ads without realizing it.

I often wonder how many actually make this mistake.   Whether the user is clicking on an ad by mistake can be tracked through the bounce rate and time spent on the site, but what about more advanced tools such as “Did this ad drive a member to purchase?”, or “Did the brand’s overall equity improve after the short site visit?”.   Will a long term brand impact be the result of the appearance of a Google ad side banner, as opposed to a 30 second television spot on Sunday Night Football?  Obviously, the answer is no, but how can we measure such short term impact and find the actual value of online advertising.  This is nothing new with advertising in general.  It has always been an impossible chore to find out exactly if a billboard had increased brand value by a percentage of the people who noticed it, or if a commercial persuaded someone to buy in relation to their level of attention in watching the ads.  The argument presented in the shortfall of online advertising is true, but somewhat shortsighted.  It is not that online ads are currently unable to accurately predict or reach our desired trend or demographic, but the potential to near exactness in the measurement of these ads are greater in the future.  The amount of data that can be collected in a particular online ad overwhelms what can currently be collected from a billboard.  While I’m sure the author is well aware that the potential to improve targeting exists with online tools, I doubt anyone can predict the level to which it will expand.  While it is clear that marketing efforts are expanding online, it is not clear the level to which marketers will devote their time.