Rob Norman wants to help advertisers buy advertising with outcomes, not proxies, in mind – but that doesn’t mean brands should be fixated on end goals.
Around the industry, new attribution and tracking technology is drawing executives to seek pricing ad pricing models that involve paying only when outcomes like product purchases are recorded.
That is likely to be one of the topics discussed this week at DMEXCO, the big ad industry gathering in Cologne.
For many, it is the holy grail of “performance” marketing. But GroupM chief digital officer Norman doesn’t think brands should have a one-track mind.
“What advertisers are seeking above everything else is predictable outcomes,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Adding predictability and certainty that the inputs, being the budget, match the outputs, being the intended results, has become a sharp focus.”
But Norman seems to have a more nuanced approach. “We’re trying to avoid going down the rabbit hole of singular definitions for performance as opposed to holistic definitions of performance,” he says. “We take a holistic view of performance.”
Here is an example Norman gives: “You may have a metric that’s about ecommerce sales in a particular channel. But you may be able to prove the, if you can raise awareness or preference by 2%, that you drive more sales through the ecommerce channel than if you focused very narrowly on just deliberately trying to buy ads that drive in to ecommerce.”
Welcome to the Vibrant Future,” a video series of thought leadership from DMEXCO 2017 presented by Criteo. For more videos please visit this page.
