The company I work for generally deals in print media, but is now trying to get involved with web ad design/placement. We are working with a vendor that has a website where our client wants to put some content (we, as the design company are middle-manning this as well as doing the design). The client asked us some questions. The answers to these questions will come from the actual website vendors, but we want to understand the answers before relaying them to the client currently though, we dont 100% understand the questions this is where we would like some clarification:
1. When tracking things like total number of visitors/views & brand impressions & Click-through rate & other relevant metrics, what is generally considered to constitute legitimate proof of presented figures for each?
(Also, what is considered to NOT constitute legitimate proof, but may be commonly presented to unknowing clients instead of legitimate proof ie is there anything to watch out for, in terms of a vendor saying Look at these great figures, it means many people are looking at/acting on the ads and us turning around, showing them to a client, and their Internet Marketing/IT staff saying but this data doesnt justify your conclusions )?
2. The potential client asked us something like what will be the impression level at a given page. What exactly does this mean? I understand what Brand impression and number of impressions means, but not the level. Couldnt find anything clear about this online.
3. What is typically meant by the term Guaranteed traffic ? How do you guarantee traffic, and what typically happens if the guarantee is not met?
4. Link tracking using 3rd Party Ad Serving The vendor has a password-protected secure site. On this site our client wants to place some ads that link to their site. Can this ad be tracked using a 3rd party ad tracking system like DART? Can pretty much any ad be tracked this way, regardless of whether or not the site is secure? How much trouble is it for a typical web developer to implement third-party tracking?
5. This is perhaps the most important what other questions/topics typically come up when these types of deals are discussed? What should the client be asking, and what are the correct answers? What other common, web-marketing-specific, concepts should we be aware of?
Any response to any or all of these questions, or any other relevant information would be greatly appreciated. Links to useful articles where I can find answers are excellent also. Thank you very much.
Andrey
by: shalomcPosted on 2009-10-20 at 03:00:42ID: 25612425
these are great questions :)
Trust everybody but cut the cards. You should audit your vendor periodically, preferably close it in the contract. Auditing means getting samples of the logs and applying statistical analysis to see that the logs are not artificially inflated. Being in the advertising industry, you probably have access to statisticians whose expertise is survey validation, and the problem is similar. You should also monitor closely the web site with services like Alexa and Netcraft. If the vendor is using google analytics, you can rely on it as a valid third party source, or even insist on using it in addition to whatever the vendor is using.
Do not blindly accept pretty graphs in a power point presentation.
Impression level probably means number of impressions, I am not aware of any other relevant level.
You cannot really guarantee traffic, you can only extrapolate based on past performance. It is up to you to decide what to do if the traffic is not up to expectations. Maybe a performance based fee is best? for example, instead of a flat fee you can decide on payment per 10000 pageviews, or even better on a PPC method.
Ad tracking is not dependent on the security of the web site, except for sites protected by SSL, and some users with extra paranoid browser settings. SSL may be a problem, as not all ad tracking services support it.
Ideally you should try to track conversion rates all the way through.
ShalomC