Tracking Rich Media Ads

With millions of dollars spent on interactive rich media advertising every quarter, advertisers need to understand in detail whether each dollar spent is worthwhile.

Tracking the performance of GIF banners and text links using click tracking is a simple way of measuring performance. But tracking the performance of video and rich media advertising, gets a whole lot more complicated.

Just mention the word 'calculus' and it is not easy to see why the very concept of tracking such rich media makes the eyes of most media people glaze over.

Most recognize that tracking measurement is good in any marketing activity. In rich media, this means measuring such metrics as: rollovers; panel openings and closings; audio activation and deactivation; video play, stop, rewind, and forward; video close, replay, and download; etcetera

It gets more complicated with multiple interactions or experiences in one or more user sessions. The key problems are:

Data Volume - The mass of data you can collect is huge, and there are a lot of parameters and insights to be derived from that data. The sheer volume of data is an obvious problem to measurement. And much of this tracking data isn't easily recognized in a meaningful way, as with the other established forms of measurement.

Context Complexity - Add to this - polymorphic context; user variables [such as their mental and emotional states] can affect a reaction to any rich experience.

User Interactions - The interactions one can have inside a rich online ad can also be complex and large in volume. This is inspite of the original ad aiming to gain the viewers attention for a mere fraction of the time eventually spent weaving their own webs from the initial click.

And the outcome of all this is supposedly, behavioral targeting.

So how do we rationalize rich media experiences, and how do we effectively measure these experiences?

Despite all the half measures and the placating done by the Nielsens and comScores of the world, online will prove to be richer in data and measurement than all other forms of marketing.

The trend today is to measure TIME as the single most important element. By starting with one single measure, such as total time spent in a target domain linked to the ad, and build from there, systematically adding measurement levels as patterns and prictures start emerging.