Can Google Track ROI on Offline Ads?
- By: kidmercury [privmsg - website] On 18th Feb 2006 In
Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 points to a MediaPost article that offers some insight into how Google plans on tracking ROI for advertisers for its offline advertising ventures, and how the firm's acquisition of radio ad firm dMarc could be crucial to their strategy. From the article:
Google's recent purchase of dMarc, a radio ad agency that allows insertion of ads in airplay through an online interface, raises more interesting possibilities in accountability and ROI.
Keane pointed to dMarc's much-touted ability to verify ad play "down to the second" through its digital tracking system--but was close-lipped when asked whether the rollout of digital radio, in both terrestrial and satellite forms, might hold promise for tracking consumer response as well.
Nonetheless, digital radio technology firm HD iBiquity's CEO, Bob Struble, has spoken seriously of including "buy buttons" in digital radio sets, allowing advertisers to establish causal links between ads and purchases. DMarc CEO Chad Steelberg confirmed in January that dMarc is an active partner of HD iBiquity, and is following the rollout of digital radio closely.
In addition to potential solutions afforded by dMarc, the article discusses other methods of offline tracking that Google is considering, including tactics such as unique phone numbers and URLs for certain ads as well as more obscure formulas such as the one used by Nielsen to calculate TV ratings.
So can Google track offline ads? Does this sound feasible to you? If so, is this just another point privacy advocates can cite when raising concerns about Google?
privacy may be a premium service
brilliant concept actually, surely radio's just the first - put that button in the formerly offline world every way you can and sure it can be tracked. As marketing, what's not to love about it?
As privacy?
two-edged sword isn't it? The fact is invading our privacy to an insane degree of intimacy really will supply us - algorithmically - with better acquisitions. So this is one force in motion, and it won't be stopped.
The other force in motion is finding a way to trust these computers with their profiles of us. I'm thinking that continually denying the former force is not the best way to further the latter force - some contractual glue to bind the two eventually needs to be spelled out, with Constitution-strength trustworthiness.
This has not happened yet, it's a currently open niche.