To date interactive marketing spend in the CPG world has yet to exceed the 7-10% threshold, clearly driven by the fact that conversion cannot be measured just from a "visit" to a iMarketing website. Although AMAZON.com, some niche-niche products, custom cosmeticeutical, adult use products have bridged the gap, there is a long way to go for the household use products, foods, automobiles, clothes, etc.
Much like I told the COO of one of the major media metrics companies, I believe until we get to a point where we can measure true conversion from visit to a brands iMarketing website or at least find a common sense way to translate the visit into purchase ENGAGEMENT, may be an uphill battle.
MediaPost had an article yesterday on the question of Measuring User Engagement In A New Metrics World there were some interesting points made:
- Many have dropped the page view altogether as an audience metric.
- To fill the void, vendors are coming up with their own interpretations of engagement.
- This "visits" metric, defined as the number of times a unique person accesses content (with breaks between accesses of at least 30 minutes) is a key component of user engagement, explained comScore.
- an alternative for measuring user engagement that tells us how frequently visitors are actually returning to the site to view more content.
- The challenge and opportunity therefore, for vertical content publishers, is to combine engagement metrics with strong compelling content to those users who are engaged with the site.
- offer content to users anytime and anyplace, through the Web and on their mobile device, for instance.
- content is what drives loyalty and engagement.