Brand creative vs. direct response

Now that I've sufficiently disparaged the last cookie, let me pour more kerosene on the fire and say that there is no such thing as an online brand ad or an online direct response ad. Period. It does not make a difference. They are artificial constructs, hold-overs from traditional advertising.

"Huh?" you say. I know you want to skewer me for that one, but hear me out. There's logic to my madness and a point to all this.

The common view is that direct response creative is designed to elicit a measurable response, and that brand ads are designed to change attitudes. But if you think about it for just a moment, if your brand ad doesn't change attitudes that translate into eliciting a measurable response, it's not doing your brand one bit of good. You know that. So stop differentiating, unless it'll make you feel better knowing that everyone now has a positive view of your brand as you go out of business.

It's not necessarily your fault. The hold-over comes from direct response in offline, where ads are designed for trackability and specificity -- that offline direct mail piece with a special offer. A consumer gets it in the mail and responds. Bingo! It's tracked back to the source ID of mailing, catalog or coupon book… of an individual. A television infomercial running spot ZIP codes in PRIZM clusters results in a consumer picking up the phone. There is a conversion cycle to direct response offline. When someone responds, you know who it is. You figure out your cost to produce the offer, count the orders or layer in the conversion rate, and voila. X in, Y out and a bunch of Zs who you can now remarket to because you have their contact info.

But the brand's television commercial, radio or outdoor ad that just communicates "Phone. Sexy." has no individually trackable conversion cycle because you never know when an individual is exposed. You only have group data. Econometric modeling indicates media weights that increase responses, sales, etc… but it is in the meta. You don't know who it is.

That's where the fallacy of classifying things the same way in online advertising emerges. Online, you can track brand ads: who saw them and who responded. An individual (OK, an IP, stop being picky). You can also track how their attitudes change with exposed and non-exposed groups with as much, or more accuracy, than you can track with many direct-response programs offline. When you plug into the internet, your cookies are you. It's not the creative that defines whether something is a direct response ad or a brand ad. It is the medium and the trackability of individuals in that medium.

Do you see where I'm going with this yet? That is why attribution is crucial. Because you can track creative of various types, and impact, it is crucial that the combinations of exposures are better understood. So, the next time you hear someone say "It's a brand ad," when you ask about measurement, look at them calmly and say, "You're an idiot. Now let me tell you why."