Six and a half years ago Steve Doyle, chief commercial officer at online and video advertising company InSkin Media, joked with his mates at the pub they’ll get people off click-through rates.
“They won’t be worried about click-through rates,” reminisced Doyle, “because we’ll be able to talk about interaction levels and brand awareness and dwell time.”
Well, clearly that didn’t happen as click-through rates are still frequently used.
However, Doyle believes it’s paramount the industry moves past measuring online ads by their click-through rates, as, let’s face it, they’re not the prettiest results. The average result of a click-through rate on ads is 0.06 per cent said Doyle.
“We absolutely have to evolve the way that brand advertisers measure. And that needs to be more sophisticated…in the industry, and we’re trying to push that forward,” he told B&T.
“The traditional problem we’ve got is that the older school advertising community viewed offline media, like TV and print, as the way to do branding and the digital to do response.
“And so therefore we’ve got to take people on a journey in terms of education with what they can with brand advertising online and how they should be measuring, and what success looks like.”
There’s so many ways to measure a campaign’s success as well, aside from click-through rates, said Doyle, and it can be confusing.
“What we’re trying to do is give advertisers a clear indication of what they should be measuring – and that’s dwell time and time spent with a brand.”
Within the media agency world Doyle said people tend to agree with that, “it’s translating that on to clients and understanding that there’s more to it than the number of visits on site equals good, which is the default position a lot of first-time clients go with”.
Doyle’s sentiments echo what InSkin Media’s general manager in Australia, Matthew Newcomb, told B&T in May, which is the idea that you couldn’t build a brand online is ludicrous.
“When you think about all the sight, sound, motion…the amazing creative that you can build, the amount of space you’ve got to play with – some people still think you can’t build brands online,” he said.
“It’s a total fallacy. Of course you can, and you should.”
Newcomb was brought in as general manager when InSkin Media launched in Australia six months ago.
The brand continues to grow as well with two new hires, Edward France and Natalia Cotter-Moroz as senior account executives.
“I’m delighted to be able to boost the team in this way, and am confident we now have the very best structure to continue the amazing trajectory we have achieved so far this year,” said Newcomb on the appointments.
“The second half of 2015 promises to be very busy for InSkin Media with several significant campaigns and publisher relationships soon to be announced. Having Natalie and Ed on board will only help us to continue to invigorate the local market.”
