By Adam Wakefield

The dilemma of measuring digital advertising is a pressing one, and the industry recognises this. In 2011 in the United States, a lifetime ago in the digital space, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the Association of National Advertisers, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, plus supporting cast Bain & Company and MediaLink, came together to form the "Making Measurement Make Sense" initiative. 

The aim of the initiative, as reported at the time, was to define metrics and measurement so that a common methodology could be arrived at for assessing the online space. Five years later, the industry is no closer to solving the measurement conundrum.

Square pegs for square KPIs

For Andrew Kramer, Africa head of sales at Opera MediaWorks EMEA, the confusion digital measurement can cause relates to the KPIs per campaign.  
"If you are looking for reach on video, for example, the measurement is Cost Per Completed View, the full view," Kramer says.

"If your KPI is an action, then the measurement is Cost Per Click or Cost Per Install. If you are looking for brand awareness outside of video, then you should be buying bigger formats like Interstitial and the KPI is CPM efficiency."

Media owners are not helping themselves either by selling "sexy creative ideas", which often sees too much budget being allocated to production. The knock on effect is that the campaign then doesn’t have enough spend to achieve critical mass in terms of reach, resulting in a potential ad spend wastage.

Simon Lloyd, director of performance marketing at Quirk, echoes Kramer's view and suggests reverse-engineering a campaign from finish to start to avoid "chasing the vanity metrics and not the results metrics".

"Work back from the desired end point. Not the starting point. If the objective is leads, work from cost per lead, don't start measuring from the awareness end of the funnel. Impressions are not important if the campaign objective is leads," he says.

Integrity over profit

Marrying the appropriate KPI to the right platform is a step in the right direction, but another problem weighing down digital measurement is its lack of transparency.

Lloyd's explains that within digital, there are a myriad of platforms and networks that all plug into the same base pool of inventory. Many heads, one body.

"Effectively, you are never sure what layers are being put on top of the actual cost of media by different platforms and partners or resellers. This makes knowing the true value of media distorted," Lloyd says.

"The industry needs more transparency to enable fair comparison."

Kramer for one has seen this obfuscation, with video again a case in point.  

"The problem is when media owners base the rate and product on what their format delivers. If we take video, surely the uniform measurement should be a cost per completed view, yet we have big media owners charging clients after a few seconds," he says.

"If we are hoping to move money from TV, then we need to match their integrity and sell a full commercial. If your product only delivers 10 seconds of focused view time, then surely you would be better off only accepting video of 10 seconds or less?"

Is there hope for a standard measurement?

Digital measurement, as described above, has its problems but are they redeemable? Can digital save itself from its own lack of clarity?

Lloyd believes progress can only be made once agencies and platforms are transparent about the actual cost of media.

Kramer is somewhat more optimistic.

"Clearly, our focus is on video and we do believe that between Facebook, YouTube and ourselves, we need to forge ahead with creating a standard measurement much the same way big TV has done across channels," he says.

"Is it possible? I do believe it is and will happen in time."

What are your thoughts on measurement in digital advertising? Let us know in the comments below.