Ad effectiveness online varies with the quality of the campaign, just as it does on any other channels. The growth we have seen in online advertising (the Internet Advertising Bureau projects more than 12 per cent year-on-year growth for 2014 and 2015) is testament to the numerous successful and great campaigns in digital, which drive everything from direct response to awareness to engagement.
Digital is the fastest-growing channel because our clients understand that good targeting and creative can deliver outstanding results.
Clients just need to ask the right questions of their agency – basic and low cost-per-click campaigns will inevitably lead to low click-throughs. That said, click-through rate is barely used any more as a measure of ad effectiveness as we have so many other metrics such as post-click, view-through, cost-per-engagement etc.
Mobile is still the biggest growth area, and mobile search is arguably the most creative ad format as it takes contextual signals (location, time of day plus audience signals) and offers a range of creative executions from click-to-call to driving consumers into store to downloading apps to buying on a website.
There are so many options available to put ads in front of people that add value to their experience, not interrupt what they were trying to do.
Measuring all this with Universal Analytics allows us to piece together all digital channels plus offline data so we can fully understand customer journeys for the first time, in real time, and make intelligent media decisions based on this – all 100 per cent anonymised.
Last but not least, companies have to follow their clients. As media consumption continues to flood into digital channels, companies have to understand how to communicate and engage with them in very new ways – the most sophisticated agencies and advertisers are doing this already.
Matt Bush, head of performance agency at Google