A recent article in Ad Age magazine covered how digital advertising is changing, and as an online marketing and SEO company, we’ve certainly noticed the changes.

Although online advertising has traditionally focused on measurement, since after all, what other form of media makes it possible to track the exact numbers of views and conversions a particular ad has received?  However, focusing simply on measurement can cause a marketing company to lose sight of the actual purpose of their ad campaigns.  In the Ad Age article, writer Andy Atheron argues that internet advertising should become more like television, and if the online marketing industry could start fresh, he’d take the emphasis off measurement.  And we quote:

“So, if we were starting fresh in today’s environment, I would simply argue that we wouldn’t (and thus shouldn’t) lead with measurement. The measurement pitch has obviously worked extremely well for direct response; about 30% of DR-focused measured media spend is now online. But 95% of brand spending, or more than $100 billion, is still offline. For those budgets, I think our collective pitch should be more like “Your audience moved. Your marketing needs to follow them. Let us show you how the internet can deliver the same quality, scalability and value as TV.” Measurement should still be an important part of the story — we’d be foolish to ignore all the opportunities there — but I submit that it should be the sizzle not the steak.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.