FastCompany.com has a nice story on the new platform coming out next week called Online Campaign Ratings, or OCR for short.

In one sense, OCR sounds like a major improvement over the Nielsen box, a measurement tool I have always questioned (BTW, how many people do you know with a Nielsen box? How about people using Facebook?). There is no doubt that adding demographic data to digital media planning and tracking tools will be extremely valuable. And yes, translating the Web measurement into a metric that “old school” media planners understand will likely help move some small amount of large branding media budgets from TV to the Web (specifically digital video).

However, the folks over at Digiday are asking if applying a traditional media measurement tool is actually a good thing for the world of digital media? This is a very valid question, and one I think about a lot. Specifically, is the GRP the best way to measure media reach, or the best available tool to measure traditional media at the time it was developed?

The question we need to be asking is whether the online GRP, or OCR in this case, will make digital media planning more effective for advertisers and improve the business of digital publishing?

The digital campaign ends on a positive note, with solid results, and you put together some kind of wrap-up or “post-mortem” report summarizing how the campaign performed. Included in the report are all kinds of metrics, ranging from CPMs, to effective CPCs to potentially CPL (cost per lead) and/or CPA (cost per acquisition) analyses. After going through the results and explaining what everything means, and maybe even after supplying some industry benchmarks to provide a point of reference, you get a response something like this:

“this is great, be we were actually hoping to see a lower eCPC”

or maybe this

“thanks for the report, but we were expecting a lower CPA than what the campaign produced.”

Sound familiar?

I’ve been involved in launching, managing and reporting on online advertising campaigns for more than 9 years, and I have consistently seen this type of response from clients (particularly newer ones). Recently, after receiving a similar response, someone from our team had the courage to ask the client what results they seen from some of their traditional media buys for the same campaign. The client responded “oh, we don’t know what that produced.”

So why the higher expectations for digital media?

While the ability to make a Facebook page is incredibly simple, knowing how to engage your audience takes a little more savvy.  Here’s a list that details how five of the best Facebook fan pages have accomplished that feat.

Key Takeaways: In addition to providing a forum around which your brand advocates can develop a community, some key elements of a successful Facebook fan page include:

• Content that is targeted to both the audience and the channel.  Facebook is a place for more informal communications.
• Provide a steady stream of content.  Give something for your fans to talk about.
• Encourage and reward your fan’s enthusiasm.

Display Campaigns Boost Search Effectiveness

The Sensis Take: The findings from a recent iCrossing white paper offers strong anecdotal evidence in support of coordinating the efforts between your search and display strategies.  This reaffirms our assertion that no campaign lives in a vacuum.   Integrating your marketing efforts across channels can have significant compounding effect, particularly with digital.

Key Takeaways:

• 27% of people exposed to the display ad searched for the product, brand or company using a search engine.
• 21% of people exposed to the display ad typed the Web address directly into their browser and navigated to the advertiser’s site.
• 9% of people exposed to the display ad investigated the product, brand or company through social media or message boards.

“Running a display campaign causes a statistically significant increase in search traffic, specifically search visits, unique visits and SEM click-throughs,”

Tuesday Super For Facebook Brand Pages

New data from ViTrue suggests that click-through rates for content posted on Facebook fan walls are incredibly high when compared to other forms of digital marketing communications.   These rates are significantly higher Monday-Wednesday, with a peak click-through rate of 9.89% on Tuesday and a low of 2.67% on Friday.

The Sensis Take: We’ve seen a number of studies suggesting that Tuesday is also the peak day for Social Media content consumption.  This data certainly confirms our experiences at Sensis, where the traffic of our thought leadership contributions to the social web receives the most traffic on Tuesdays.

We’ll continue to track these trends as we look for more sophisticated messaging strategies that account for variables as macro as demographic distribution and as granular as time of day.

Basic Twitter Advice to Companies: Shorten Your Tweets

The Sensis Take: Time and time again, we see Twitter posts that are interesting, but can only be retweeted by major editing from the retweeter, or without attribution.  Both of these barriers to retweeting offer significant barriers to the viral spread of your communications.

You’ll also see a significant reduction in click-through rates if the retweets fail to offer a sufficient description of the content (i.e. “Check this out: http://bit.ly/TXge0”).  Incidentally, that link goes to an interesting article by Sensis CEO Jose Villa on the engagement model of digital marketing.

Key Takeaway: Make the maximum length of your tweet 130 characters minus your username.

-Blair Goldberg, Associate Digital Strategist

The Sensis Take: We have been arguing that Digital shops will be the lead agencies in the future.  While this exclusively digital media plan is this is certainly the most extreme example so far of ad dollars shifting to digital, it won’t be the last.

The keys to managing your Twitter talent

Key findings:

• Your Twitter team needs a firm grasp on corporate brand guides, social media strategy, and the ability to promote interesting content
• Try using your team’s initials when they post, to humanize your brand
• Develop a plan that makes it easy to change management of the account

MTV Networks: Which video ads work best

Key findings:

“The MTV survey, found that a five-second-long “pre-roll” ad in advance of the clip, combined with ten seconds of a semi-transparent ad unit that takes up the lower third of the video (and starts about ten seconds in), makes up “both the most effective and the most audience-friendly ad product for short-form online video,” according to a release.”

10 Stunning (and useful) Stats about Twitter

The Sensis Take: While Twitter seems to be the hottest thing around, it is still in its infancy.  Other social media platforms are still dominant for eyeballs.  We are not suggesting that you neglect Twitter, but know where your real returns are going to come from.

Key findings:

• 21% of Twitter accounts are empty placeholders
• Half of all Twitter users are not active, with active meaning having posted a tweet within the last 7 days.
• English still dominates Twitter
• Tuesday is the most active Twitter day, followed by Wednesday and Friday.

The Power and Value of a Fan

The Sensis Take: If content creation and social media are a part of your promotional strategy, this article gives offers some helpful benchmarks for how to calculate the value of your followers.  There is only so much you can extrapolate with a sample size of one, but it is still a worthwhile exercise.

Key Findings:

• One active fan is worth the equivalent of 445 people.
• You need to reach 14,000 people to acquire one active fan

~Blair Goldberg, Associate Digital Strategist