Approaching Metrics: why scepticism is a key component to success online
Digital advertising metrics are varied and often quite abstract to those unfamiliar with the topic. In some cases, this is because the metrics have unusual names, while in other cases it’s simply because the metrics, created by ad-networks, exist to help them achieve their own revenue goals, rather than provide clarity about ad-performance for the businesses that use them.
This post will highlight what we consider to be a healthy mindset to approaching digital campaign measurement. It guides us, when we pick from the range of performance metrics the ad-networks place at our feet and guarantees that we are reporting using the right metrics. With this mindset it doesn’t matter to us if the ad-network is established or yet to be launched, we can be sure we are reporting the right metrics that will be understood by our Clients.
Internet Affected provides the full-range of digital marketing services that include search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising and social media marketing. Our finger is also always on the pulse of emerging advertising formats we can take advantage of. Our dynamic team makes us fast and responsive, which translates into first-mover advantage for our Clients, giving their brands increased exposure online.
Read on to find out how we protect our Client’s businesses and increase their ad-revenues by having a healthy dose of scepticism in the metrics ad-networks tell us we should be using.
The ad networks dream: no more free advertising
Given half the chance both Google and Facebook would love to drop the free exposure mechanisms each of their networks offer. Google Ads does a great job of providing paid search services to businesses, but Google must also know (assuming they analyse their Google Analytics business users) that organic traffic (free) still counts for as much as 50% of all web-revenues for a business. That’s great for businesses but bad for Google Ads revenues.
It must be a similar story over at Facebook HQ, who provide paid-advertising solutions on the one-hand, but also offer free organic reach on the other (with diminishing value). We are sure that both companies would like free traffic/reach to be transformed into a paid-for only exposure. Logically the next step in this developmental timeline would be for those customers to transact directly on the advertising networks. This is actually not that far off for Facebook with their Shops offer, while in hospitality Google Hotel Ads is already achieving this with their closed-off booking funnel.
Evaluating the right way: good for who? ad-Networks or your business?
Both Google and Facebook make recommendations to Advertising Agencies for improving the performance of campaigns on their networks. At one end of this recommendations spectrum are what we call “Good for them” – because the suggestions do not improve a Client’s return on investment (ROI), lower ongoing ad-channel costs, or enhance campaigns in any meaningful way a Client would be happy with. In fact, following these recommendations verbatim would most likely increase the monthly media spend (click spend), broaden the audience significantly, and make the campaigns less relevant!
At the other end of the recommendations spectrum is what we call “Good for us” – these are the KPIs, goals and metrics we have built up over the years based on our experience. We know these will be understood by our Clients because the metrics are based on tangible actions where their value added is clear.
Let’s look at some of the most common advertising performance metrics and how we make sense of them for our Clients.
Reach
This literally describes how many people a post or an advertisement on a social network has been seen by.
If reach is being used as part of a paid advertising mechanism, it is sometimes possible to choose “unique daily reach” as an ad-delivery method. That is because if an advertising audience is bigger than the advertising budget, “unique daily reach” should guarantee that the same people in your audience only see it once, thus maximising the exposure of the advertisement to the widest possible audience. If another ad-delivery format is selected (for example impressions) there is the chance that a single person may see the advertisement more than once (by comparison limiting the diversity of exposure for the advertisement).
Organic Reach
Describes the number of people that saw a post without any form of paid promotion. Organic reach is in decline because in the case of Facebook, idem any other social media platform that starts to acquire market share and importance, it no longer needs to promise free reach for anything, as the network has a solid commercial position. During the past 20 years similar reductions of free exposure in the search channels has occurred in line with the commercial growth of the search platforms, so for us it really is nothing new.
What our Clients rely on is our unique expertise to advise them strategically on changes they should make, the recommendations that can be safely ignored, and those that will need to be tabled for discussion in 6,12, 18- or 24-months’ time.
Engagement
Represents any type of engagement/interaction that a person has had with an advertisement or post.
It used to be that if a person ‘liked’ something, another connected friend might see a notice in their social media news fees such as “Pete also liked this”. What we note, is that whether it was Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or TikTok in start-up, they began offering maximum free exposure via notifications, engagement pings, or free organic reach to its new users. The goal being to simply keep people on the platform. However, as a platform matures, take Facebook as an example, there is no-longer the same need to make these free mechanisms available, and so they get taken away!
There are many courses online that offer guides on how to take advantage of the short-term exposure opportunities available on specific social media platforms. We would highlight that most of these free mechanisms will be retired as soon as possible, so paid advertising options need to be used instead.
At the time of writing in Facebook when commenting on a post there is a reasonable chance – depending on the level of activity in a user’s personal news feed - that friends may be made aware of the comment being made in their own personal news feed.
While a comment or a like is a form of engagement, to most financially minded stakeholders in our Client’s businesses they are more interested in the return on investment (ROI) for campaigns in sales terms, whether this is monetary revenue of sales leads to develop. Campaign reports that only use engagement as a performance metric are simply not convincing.
For our ad-campaigns the only engagements we are interested in are those that demonstrate some form of explicit interest in the business: website visits, starting a booking/transactional process, contacting the business directly, or joining a club or newsletter. These are the commercially interesting engagements worth tracking, and which your business should be seeing in reports from your digital marketing provider.
A post with 20,000 engagements might sound impressive, but there is a lot of bot traffic on social networks, so looking beyond these face value metrics is important and as a company we take these numbers with a large pinch of salt. As case in point in 2019 Facebook had to pay $40million to advertisers because they were found to have inflated video views by up to 900%.
Engagement can and does have value for businesses, but it does depend on the type of campaign that is being run. If used as a stand-alone reporting metric, you need to be sure that the target audience is really well defined, so any engagements are from people you know your business is interested in. For example, having great engagement on an ad for a pensioner’s bingo night, where you are targeting all age groups could be expensive and pointless!
Likes
Facebook Likes were removed from pages for artists, public figures and brands (our clients were advised to never run these types of campaigns).
Likes used to appear on a person’s news feed but again it has become one of those historically inconvenient metrics as Facebook moves to charging for every type of interaction. Likes still exist for businesses pages, but we think they will be removed in due course and the “Follow” option will become the new like. Liking individual posts is not currently going away, but the ability to like a specific business page has. There used to be a direct correlation between the number of likes on a post and its organic reach, but the move to pay-for exposure in Facebook means that nowadays its value seems in being able to let advertisers trigger paid advertising off this type of interaction.
Promote/Boost
The buttons available to promote posts in Facebook have always for us a poor substitute for targeting key audience segments strategically. Instead we see these “Boost” buttons as more of a convenient push-button cash making-facility for Facebook that, while providing some degree of value for businesses, do not provide the same level of granular targeting as other approaches that we use, and which guarantee our Clients are reaching the right audience segments. That’s why we don’t recommend the boost button.
Ad Diagnostics / Quality Score
Mature advertising networks need to create ways of driving revenues and one of the ways they do this is to add a metric to the performance of your advert that pushes advertisers down a funnel of continual improvement. Facebook used to call this ad-relevancy, and then moved to change to Ad-Diagnostics. Google Ads uses Quality Score. While they can provide helpful instructions for advertisers that are just starting out on their networks and need some advice, they also place a veil of secrecy over exactly what makes an advertisement successful.
Final Summary
It’s worth bearing in mind that it doesn’t matter which advertising network is under the critical eye, if free exposure is being offered, it will eventually become a paid exposure mechanism once the network gains a foothold.
While that might appear bad for business, we do find that the migration to a paid mechanism has benefits in terms of immediacy, control and messaging, that simply cannot be guaranteed via equivalent version in free format.
Having a healthy dose of scepticism about what the ad-networks are suggesting in the form of recommendations ensures that Internet Affected is always looking beyond their face value for our Clients and protecting their investment for exposure online.
In our opinion it seems reasonable that advertising network choices will eventually be Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook with a few specific regional players. Time will tell.
For our Clients we continue to keep on top of these changes, advising them of the best ways to leverage the right digital channels for their customer mix. Whatever future digital marketplaces appear, we will ensure that they can position their brands strongly within them.
About the Author
Glyn Spencer Hopkins is the owner of Internet Affected and has been working exclusively with hotels for over a decade.
Internet Affected provides web marketing services tailored to the individual personalities of hotels; a complete range of digital services designed to help them take back ownership of their hotel brand from the OTAs. Specialized marketing solutions to increase guest loyalty, food & beverage bookings, events and wedding inquiries, clearly reported in straightforward language.
