Actual impact, not cost per thousand

Over the past few years, consumers have become more aware of the choices they have, not only with media and related consumption but also in terms of the content they want or need across any of their touchpoints in a day.

This is the age we live in, driven by consumers and what they want, hence advertisers need to concentrate more on impact than on reach. So what does this impact actually look like? Well, if consumers are driving content "individually", why do we as advertisers continue to mass market?

What mass marketing's all about...

Mass marketing is about reach and overshadows the real consumer value for any brand. In my opinion, for as long as we continue to mass market and target, we are lost in the traditional way of talking to consumers rather than engaging with them, which is what they actually want.

© Robert Churchill – 123RF.com

This individual metric model is the future of media consumption measurement, aligned to actual consumer shifts, patterns, behaviour and need. What this model looks like depends on the business you are in, so a media owner should build a metric perhaps using joint criteria of consumer awareness, attitude, product choice and action combined with the brand/marketer's response to consumer behaviour. This is more than the traditional media exposure model of CPM or reach, as the interpretation of the results differs greatly - it's about choices that can come from understanding content consumption and preferences, which stems from consumer aspirations and purpose or actual impact.

Traditional media will always remain relevant here, however, the impact model is one that should be used to enhance our knowledge of consumer interactive media usage, which is what the current landscape is made up of.

In the past, and even right now, one of the key measurements used in traditional media is ad recall, which is great but only tells us what influence the ad had on the consumer, it does not tell us what the consumer did with the message. This, for me, is the missing link in understanding the real value of a consumer - the actual impact!