While brand marketers have employed marketing mix modeling for a long time, it’s not the most effective way to measure the return on digital video. That’s where attribution comes in.
“Attribution looks at things at a very detailed transaction level. Individual people and households and devices, so it’s able to really see the impact of digital video,” says Jim Spaeth, who is a Partner at the Sequent Partners consultancy.
Spaeth is one of a host of industry experts who gathered in Manhattan for the recent Beet.TV Leadership Summit titled Outcomes, presented by video marketing technology provider Eyeview. In this interview, he talks about the impact of video throughout the purchase funnel and the “astronomical” ROI for Honda dealerships highlighted by a Sequent case study.
“Mix modeling is a great tool that serves a great purpose, but it’s not very fine its view of the marketplace,” says Spaeth. And because video usually isn’t the biggest piece of a marketer’s overall budget, it’s hard to get a read on its direct contributions to sales.
Last year, Sequent was tapped by Eyeview to do a deep dive on the importance of video in driving offline sales. Sequent surveyed more than 200 senior brand managers and interviewed some two dozen in depth. The study’s most noteworthy findings indicated that to demonstrate real ROI from video marketing campaigns, brands must embrace a one-to-one model instead of one-to-many.
The research also revealed that digital video is at its inflection point of the adoption curve, moving from a branding to a sales tool. Some 50% of respondents were using ROI as a way of gauging the payback of digital video and about 50% of them said they hoped to be doing so “in another year or two,” according to Spaeth.
He cites the example of TriHonda Dealers (Connecticut, New Jersey and New York), which had “one of the most spectacular ROI’s I’ve ever seen.” Each dollar invested in the campaign returned $7 in profit.
“It was tremendously effective for them,” says Spaeth. “They really pulled together kind of the triple header of strong creative, good targeting and personalization.”
Interviewing Jim Spaeth for Beet.TV was Matt Prohaska (Prohaska Consulting).
This video is part of a Beet.TV leadership summit on video outcomes presented by Eyeview. For more videos from event, please visit this page.
