53% of Digital Advertising Impressions Ineffective, According to Company Research
STAMFORD, Conn. – InsightExpress, a leading provider of media analytics and marketing accountability solutions for brand marketers, launched MediaInsights, a unique approach for audience measurement and post-buy campaign validation. MediaInsights helps advertisers and agencies to audit their media purchases, optimize their in-market campaigns and inform future campaigns by providing:
“Access to this unmatched consumer level campaign data via an intuitive dashboard really sets InsightExpress apart.”
- A summary of key audience accountability indicators such as total impressions, unduplicated reach and frequency, GRPs, and targeting efficiency
- A rich profile of demographics including age, gender, income, race, presence of children, marital status, education and employment
- Behavioral data including website visitation information and inventory run through ad networks, trading desks and Data Management Platforms (DMPs)
Over Half of Advertising Impressions Ineffective?
With 100 billion impressions already under measurement, an analysis conducted by InsightExpress concludes that the average digital campaign wastes 53% of impressions due to oversaturation, meaning over a half of advertising exposures are unnecessary.
According to data from the company’s InsightNorms database, it is further reported that media delivery is most effective at a frequency of 1-6 exposures, moderately effective at 7-16 exposures and all exposures above 17 become ineffective due to oversaturation.
Taking into account eMarketer’s projected $42 billion in 2013 US digital ad spending1 with the 53% in reported oversaturation, the issues related to inadequate frequency capping translate to a staggering $22 billion in estimated annual wasted media spend. For the average campaign* this saturation results in approximately 15 million wasted impressions that not only provide little return on investment, but can also negatively impact consumers’ digital experience.
Hidden Inefficiencies
This vast industry inefficiency has not been previously recognized for two reasons. First, many media buyers may have falsely assumed that their media is being capped. In reality, the technology used to control frequency is flawed because it is based upon unreliable cookie data, as explained below.
Traditionally, most common approaches to collecting impression data have been based upon a) cookies subject to deletion or b) metered solutions that only cover home online behavior and a fraction of a consumer’s total devices. Drawing a sample from the over 1100 campaigns tested, InsightExpress identified that frequency calculated using browser cookies was understated by 64% and frequency calculated using meters was understated by 23%, as compared to frequency data collected with MediaInsights. Thanks to the company’s patent-pending Universal ID™ technology that looks across browsers, devices and locations, MediaInsights offers a far more accurate representation of an individual’s true online media exposure.
A New Methodology
MediaInsights provides more reliable data because it features numerous methodological improvements over existing audience measurement approaches including:
1. The unprecedented scale of the InsightExpress data warehouse, which captures over 1 billion unique browser cookies a month to offer a reliable microcosm of the digital advertising ecosystem for more accurate projections.
2. A subset of the InsightExpress data warehouse called the Ignite Network that maintains information about online advertising exposure for 2.5M fully opted-in members and the ability to link audience data to proprietary brand metrics and offline sales date for true ROI measurement.
3. More stable data as a result of Weightless Projection™, a statistical technique that significantly reduces the biases inherent in all audience collection systems such as variable rates of response and participation among different groups of people. Weightless Projection allows InsightExpress to reliably project frequency and reach data to the U.S. population for online campaigns.
4. InsightExpress’ patent-pending Universal ID™ technology, which not only measures a consumer’s entire digital footprint across locations and devices to determine a campaign’s true reach and frequency, but also addresses the legacy inaccuracies in frequency data that are caused by cookie deletion.
5. A more relevant campaign planning tool that consolidates data in a single platform. This real-time dashboard allows users to manage all campaign measurement activities under one roof, from optimization to audience delivery.
“MediaInsights has quickly become a trusted, real-time audience accountability resource that J3 relies on to ensure our media buys are working efficiently and our targets are performing well on behalf of our brands,” said Josh Bock, VP, Group Partner, Decision Sciences at J3. “Access to this unmatched consumer level campaign data via an intuitive dashboard really sets InsightExpress apart.”
“InsightExpress is pleased to introduce a much needed system for checks and balances within the media measurement industry,” said Marc Ryan, Co-Chief Executive Officer at InsightExpress. “While there has been much focus lately on in-view metrics as a source of wasted media, the elephant in the room in terms of waste is not in-view metrics, but rather it’s the oversaturation of ad frequency across multiple browsers, devices and locations that hasn’t been adequately captured by traditional audience reporting.”
1 eMarketer, Sep 2012: http://www.emarketer.com/newsroom/index.php/digital-ad-spending-top-37-billion-2012-market-consolidates/
*An average digital campaign is defined as having 30M impressions.
About InsightExpress
InsightExpress is a leading provider of media analytics and marketing accountability solutions for brand marketers. The company’s proprietary solutions provide a holistic approach to advertising measurement that quantifies the return on marketing investment for online, mobile, tablet and cross-media campaigns. With vast industry expertise, inventive methodologies and an exclusive data analytics platform, InsightExpress helps agencies, media and marketers to measure and optimize their marketing initiatives across digital and non-digital media. InsightExpress was founded in 1999 as a strategic affiliate of NFO WorldGroup (now part of WPP’s Taylor Nelson Sofres plc), which was then the largest custom marketing research firm in North America. InsightExpress was one of the original firms to pioneer online marketing research services. Today, InsightExpress is majority-owned by General Atlantic LLC, a leading global growth investment firm. InsightExpress is headquartered in Stamford, CT, with offices in San Francisco and New York. For more information, please visit us at www.insightexpress.com or http://blog.insightexpress.com/; you may also call 203.359.4174.
