Social ROI needs standardization, traditional metrics
SINGAPORE--Social media advertising is currently facing an adoption roadblock because of the lack of a standardized measurement to track its effectiveness, but market players reckon traditional rating companies and customer relationship management (CRM) software might help alleviate this challenge.
Prashant Kumar, president for Asia world markets at IPG Mediabrands, an advertising firm, said the main problem for social media marketing is not the difficulty of the measuring one's returns on investment (ROI), but in having a standardized measurement to track these campaigns' effectiveness.
"Our biggest challenge today is the multiplicity of measurement techniques," he added during a panel discussion held in conjunction with the Ad:Tech Singapore conference here on Wednesday.
Kumar went on to say that the standardized measurement need not be "perfect". "For example, TV measurement is not perfect but it is generally consistent with what the reality is."
He then called on traditional rating companies such Nielsen, which own metrics for TV and press, to move faster into the social media tracking space as they already have credibility in measuring purchasing behavior. These companies can help bring "discipline and standardization" to the problem, he noted.
Keep to traditional measurements
Fellow panelist Benjamin Koe, co-founder and CEO of social media monitoring company JamiQ, pointed to traditional CRM software to help the industry decide on a measurement standard.
He noted on Wednesday that companies should not be attributing a financial value to measurements such as a "like" on Facebook or a Twitter "retweet".
Instead, companies should base the measurement on the cost of acquiring or retaining customers, something which is already being done via CRM, he suggested. For instance, if a company can track the acquisition of a business-to-business lead on social media, this would show the value of social media marketing for that transaction, he explained.
Matthew Drury, head of interaction at ad buying firm MEC Singapore, said in a separate panel discussion at Ad:Tech that some of its clients have requested for traditional metrics to reassure them of a campaign's success. This is particularly so on nascent industries such as online games, as there are not enough case studies or clear metrics to induce companies to invest their ad dollars on these platforms, he added.