Thursday, April 24, 2008

Searching for a new ROI metric

'Return on investment' for advertising on social networks needs to be measured differently from other media, says the second panel of the day.

Vibeagent.com's CEO Adam Healey admits that not many of us will have heard of his three-month old business, but he's holding his own next to the slightly-better-known Yahoo and Google.

He says that its Facebook application JetSetter, which tracks how many miles you've travelled, is now the 'third largest driver of traffic to the site [after Yahoo! and Google] and it's free traffic'. Quite a strong ROI then.

In response to a question from the floor, Healey suggested that the ROI for advertising on social network needs to factor in the importance of friendships. 'Leveraging the existing relationship between people is more powerful for marketers than general search,' he said.

Google's Rob Torres adds that businesses advertising on social networks 'need to be sure of what thay are majoring on'. Many travel advertisers are applying old school direct response measurements to new media campaigns.

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

1 comment:

rafer said...

What a crock. Ad ROI calculations is no different for social nets than elsewhere. Various vendors need to get used to the idea that it's (on average) yet another high-volume, low-unit cost ad business.

There's no high eCPM salvation for you here, make money at low margins or move along, please.