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Why You Need to Go Beyond Page Views, Impressions and Unique Users

Written by: Ryan Bifulco

Article Overview: Learn more about cutting edge Internet Advertising and Online Marketing tactics. Apply Web Marketing tips to your small business. Understand how to measure your online advertising and track your Internet marketing campaigns. Learn how to track bookings and conversions. Increase your ROI for your next online marketing program. Utilize new techniques for tracking and reporting your Internet Advertising campaigns. Helpful hints to get ahead with Web 2.0 and Web Marketing.

Why You Need to Go Beyond Page Views, Impressions and Unique Users

If your organization is only talking about impressions, page views and unique users, then you need to get with the Digital Times.

Yes, that’s right. If you are putting all your eggs in the CPM basket, you are really missing out on Web 2.0 and eventually Web 3.0. When the Internet started it was very relevant to talk about impressions and then unique users. Eventually everyone in the media and travel business focused on page views and clicks too. But the Internet has grown up and your measurement tactics should too.

In Web 2.0 we have new technologies like ajax (used on kayak.com) where a page reloads magically in front of your eyes without triggering more page views. In today’s time compressed society, how can anyone say that just because a user comes to your site 3 times during a month that you will only count it one time. That user has probably been on 10 competing websites during that same month, so he really is acting like a brand new user each time he happens to land on your site. Yes if you have cookie tracking you can argue that a user has returned. But you also have to start over from scratch with old and new customers every day in order to win their business. In a world where people can barely recall what they had for breakfast, how can we expect them to remember as much as they did 10 years ago?

In today’s world, bookings or conversions might come from other digital promotions you have done earlier or in tandem with online marketing. In today’s world, users visit a website many times within a month to get new information before they book. With RSS, podcasts, and blogs your users are interacting more frequently with your brand. You have taken your website on the road since you can now reach users in places nowhere near your own website. I help our clients at Travel Spike as they try to understand how to measure conversions. So we track as best we can knowing that for every booking we might track that we are all probably missing 2 or 3 that simply happened outside of any tracking method or system.

Now that the Internet is a much larger part of our society and everyone’s integrated marketing plan, isn’t it time to review Internet performance more accurately? Users are visiting websites and then calling your call center to purchase. Most of those purchases are not tracked properly because your call center staff does not have time to track those activities. Users might see an ad online and then see a second ad offline before making a purchase. A husband clicks on your ad at work and registers cookies before having his wife review the info and purchase from her home PC. There are too many leaks in the dam and it is long overdue for Internet advertising to get more credit for those leaks.

With all this talk about first party cookies and deleting cookies, I think we are missing the point. Impressions and clicks on one site affect your brand on other sites and even offline. So before you claim to know everything about your brand or your online media buy, maybe you should realize that your Internet presence has truly moved beyond your banners and your website. It has even jumped off the page into email, mobile, and new media.

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Article Tags: 10 years, ajax, bookings, conversions, digital promotions, eggs, impressions, marketing, measurement, own website, page views, podcasts, scratch, spike, tandem, travel business, world users



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