The two-cookie conundrum

Online marketers have adopted offline methodologies and terminologies because it's the only universally understood way to justify being able to produce something that is richer, more communicative, more immersive and capable of driving a shift in consumer attitude. They couch it under the auspices of "It's a brand ad." They separate their campaigns into direct response and brand advertising.

I understand the need to speak a universal language with the folks wielding offline dollars, but the problem is that online marketers are still judging performance on cookie data. As a result, brand advertising gets reported on with the same metrics as the rest, and when cost is layered in, online tanks in comparison.

Granted, some marketers use two different cookies for these purposes, but that's akin to creating two admission lines at a club and separating pretty and ugly people into groups before they walk through the same door, but the pretty people pay four times as much for the privilege of getting in. In that environment, the last cookie in each group still wins, because consumers in the club still have just as much chance going home with an ugly person as a pretty one.

Artificial assignment is dangerous. The banner you view as your direct response ad may actually be your best brand ad. It may communicate most effectively what your brand actually is, not what you want your brand to be. Most brand marketers have a very different view of what their brand is than their consumers do. That is because clients operate on a day-to-day level with their brand. They know it. Live it. It's a closed universe. But your brand is not what you think it is. It's not what your agency -- or even your CEO -- thinks it is.

It's what your consumers think it is.