12 March 2018

If the click is dead, the value of online Branding is still alive!

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Internet is an eminently visual medium, it is the ideal showcase for any brand that boasts. As a means it is, it has great potential to be commercially exploited; it is easy to find portals and websites of great relevance where we would achieve a high impact for our campaign. The question is, how can the impact of our message be assessed in such a way that it is profitable for both the advertiser and the advertising support?

The well-known cost per click (CPC) is a widespread option. It is especially recommended in those actions focused on the “call to action”. These have been designed by and to get an immediate response from users, reporting the long-awaited conversion. We are talking about the famous “click”, without which the campaign would be a resounding failure.

It is often used contextual advertising messages, these are characterized by being very integrated into the environment where they are located and offer an immediate solution to the need that arise in the user. This is the case of Adsense ads, designed by and to get the click, to such an extent must reach its degree of effectiveness that Google, owner of this advertising platform, has developed a complete system for optimizing them, to the disposition of advertisers and gives preference to the most effective, showing them more frequently and in a better position, relegating to lower scales the appearance of those that, due to their nature or configuration, are expected to obtain a lower result.

However, if our message does not translate into the search and capture of sales, but we intend to achieve brand awareness and a large coverage at the image level, the CPC is not a valid monetization system, given that our goal is not to that users click on our ad, but increase the chance of being seen. Therefore, what is convenient in these cases is to economically value our campaign in terms of visibility, that is, Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM).

The click is dead as an indicator to measure the success of advertising and online strategies

Claudio Bruna, also gave us more information about it, launching an interesting reflection. For every day that passes, both digital agencies and brands are understanding that only clicks as a parameter of success are useless. When one performs a digital activation, objectives and goals are established together with a client. And among these objectives, Branding is also an important aspect.

In this sense, the biggest challenge for agencies today is to establish measurement models that allow us to measure a complete digital environment and not just visits to a site or clicks on a banner.

At this point the doubt may arise. Why can not the click be the unit of measurement in all cases? Surely this issue will have generated controversy in more than one sales department of online media, and will have been the headache of the odd Social Media Planner, but the question lies in a very basic premises:

In the case of campaigns branding, a click can not be used to know the real result of the campaign, whether a brand is valued or not. On the other hand, there is a high probability that in many cases and under appropriate conditions, the messages have caused the desired effect in terms of impact and brand generation.

Not all advertising actions on the internet seek an active and immediate response from the consumer, there are other alternative online strategies to gain their trust. We can not expect the user to respond actively at all times, especially if they are not going to report any benefit.

We must recognize the importance of the medium where we publish our message. If we opt for a support with a high number of visits and whose theme is of interest to our target audience; it is expected that we have to assume a cost from the first moment our brand is shown; regardless of whether users want to interact with our ad or not. The simple fact of being there already has a value.

Jesús Encinar, CEO of idealist, mentioned a few years ago through his blogsome of the main errors when managing good online advertising by companies and advertisers, and where he highlighted the true value of branding as marketing and advertising strategy.

“The ultimate goal of most advertising is to create a strong brand. With a good brand you have a long-term future and it’s much harder to compete with you. ”

Alejandro Suárez Sánchez-Ocaña, CEO of the Publispain Group and of the Blog Network of Ocio Networks SL, launched a reflection on the real value of the click and how graphic advertising based on this advertising model can be considered an abuse for the media and media that resort to online advertising with the aim of deliberately developing branding campaigns that we all know will not be clicked.

Therefore, we can reaffirm the fact that for many companies branding does continue to be an important factor, but for the business of media and current media it has been devalued because it is not being quantified.

The question to this question could be: Is the value and impact of the brand really valued through online advertising beyond the click?