All clicks are not equal, says Microsoft

Microsoft is proposing on Monday a new way for marketers to think about the value of clicks on Internet ads, with the understanding that the last click a consumer makes isn't necessarily the most important.

Say a consumer sees an ad for a product in a video ad one day, and then clicks on a text ad to visit the retailer's site the next day, and then eventually sees a banner ad that leads to a purchase. All of the monetary credit tends to go to the text link that was clicked on, says John Chandler, principal analyst for Microsoft's Atlas ad serving division.

"Under our (Engagement Mapping) model, those will share the credit," for example, with 40 percent each going to the video ad and the text ad and 20 percent going to the banner, he says.

The ability for advertisers and ad agencies to configure the distribution of their advertising campaign dollars is the core of Microsoft's new Engagement ROI tool, which launches in beta this week as part of the Atlas Media Console.

In general, "the text links may be overvalued and the video site is probably being undervalued," Chandler says.

The tool is being announced at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's annual meeting in Phoenix.

[wsuschmitt]

This would require tracking

If this type of payment plan is to work, the Microsoft would have to track a user's every move to correctly allocate credit to the various types of media being used by the ad agency.
If Microsoft isn?t careful, then there may be a huge backlash by consumers interested in privacy issues.

[getonline]

It's data mining

Not true. Atlas is already tracking cookies, which represent computers. This new offering isn't new tracking, it's just a different way to dice and slice the data already tracked. Atlas already knows that cookie 123 saw a video ad, saw a banner, then clicked on a text ad before buying X on Y advertiser's site. What is new is that they are considering all three of these elements in determining which ad/channel gets credit.

[moofer]

Awesome innovation

Glad they're spending their time and resources making the
advertising industry better. This will really help me get my work
done, and make my time on earth more enjoyable. I'm totally
cool with all the crashes and viruses I have. As long as
advertisers can properly get revenue for all the animated gifs,
popups, popunders, popouts, annoying audio and video to sell
their vacations, mortgages, pills and contest giveaways, I'm
totally a happy man. I love it when I'm the 1,000,000th visitor to
a site and qualify for free iPods.

Sweet.