Babies can’t count but adults can. The question in humans is, of course, whether we have to learn numbers or whether “our numbers systems comes online as we mature” (see nature/nurture, evolutionary psychology, HAI Steven/KTHXBAI Noam etc.).
Long story short, it’s clear to anyone even remotely involved with online advertising that we don’t quite know how to count yet. The aptly named Louise Story at the New York Times, probably one of the most widely read journalists on advertising, writes about this exact situation in an article entitled “How Many Site Hits? Depends Who’s Counting”, published in the NYT this week. I had prepared a significant rant on how these are growing pains (see the baby thing above) and that none of this actually matters because of the power of money (extra points for citing Marx today), i.e. what counts (excuse the pun) is what advertising agencies will be able to sell their clients as metrics. I thought about talking through why Louise misses the bigger story which is that online advertising is successful because it is measurable and that those who resist putting more money to work online because of measuring problems are really just worried about their Aeron chairs (I think Aeron may actually be over… what are the chairs of Web 2.0?) on Madison Ave.
Then I saw how everyone tore into Louise (”the young Yale graduate”) for her last NYT front page appearance on elite-schooled women choosing to become full-time moms and though we may be fiercely apolitical on this blog (uhm, ok not always) we applaud any contrarian behaviour. Also, from what my Mom tells me, each of us is like a little startup and so shelling out the hundred K for Wharton is probably sensible if you want more than 1-2 kids.
The main worries of web measurement today are that ComScore and Nielsen don’t track work internet usage, that panels are skewed and that international visitors are ignored. Most of us read the NO COOKIE FOR YOU discussion earlier this year. Here’s the ComScore paper again if you missed it. Some will argue that this is just a small battle by measurement services who undercount. Indeed, audiences may be off not just by a percentage of 20 or 30, but by a factor of 2 or more.
Nevertheless I am pleading for seeing the big picture: online advertising is a runaway success because it is measurable. Online ads will continue to be a success for the next 50 years (i.e. until most of us die). For budding entrepreneurs this means: if you can come up with a new, better measurement method, please pitch me (email to the right).
Interestingly, while the NYT stirs discontent, grand seigneur Martin Sorrell is in the WSJ worrying about a downturn in the advertising market brought on by - this may be oversimplifying things - credit crunch and Democrats. If you listen to one person in advertising, Sir Martin is your man… so heed his words.*
*Unfortunately I have not yet been invited to the WPP annual thought leaders conference but here’s to hoping that sucking up to Sorrell on the blog will help.
