Vizu's Beltramo: Brand Awareness Budgets Headed Online

Image by Andrew B47 via Flickr

Google's recent purchase of display ad management platform Teracent only underscores the truth about the display space: search and display are two sides of a rapidly growing coin.  They have complementary strengths, they serve different purposes, and neither are anywhere near as big as they are destined to be.

So where is display's growth going to come from next?  How about from the monster line item of traditional advertising: brand awareness?

Heretofore unwilling to jump online, brand awareness campaigns need better tools, better ways to manage campaigns, measure ROI and ways to provide brand lift.  Just ask Dan Beltramo.

Beltramo, a consumer package goods veteran, works the ad effectiveness research space with his company Vizu.  In today's AdExchanger, he breaks down the future of online advertising in terms of bedrock industry goals:

When will the much discussed brand awareness dollars finally come online?

Brand ad dollars will come online when brand marketers are comfortable that 1) the audience they are trying to reach (or at least a material portion of such) is online, 2) the online medium is an effective means of influencing that audience, and 3) they have an effective, relevant means of tracking return on investment against this medium, just like they do in other mediums such as TV, radio, and print.

The first issue is resolving itself, and that shift is only accelerating. Vizu is addressing the second and third issues. When all three of these dynamics are in line, you will see dollars being allocated across mediums based on performance, not along lines such as "traditional" vs "new" media.

Do you ever work with creative agencies in helping them fine tune their creative? Or are your clients just in media? It would seem that the brand data might be very valuable to the creative team.

We are increasingly working with creative agencies. One of the key aspects of our solution is allowing our clients to dissect the overall brand lift metric, analyzing the extent to which particular sites, frequency of exposure, creative, and message contributed to or detracted from the overall result. The feedback on creative and message performance is extremely valuable to the creative team. It allows them to shift impressions from low-performing to high performing creative and/or messages during the campaign, using the real time data that is available in our solution, and therefore optimizing the end result. In some cases, it even enables them to make a data based decision to produce more creative that conveys a particular message

I am particularly excited by the fact that we are starting to see creative agencies use our real time, in market data capabilities to influence offline creative development. Pretty soon online advertising is going to be the dog not the tail.

Read between the lines to find the piece that enables all of the above: a dislplay advertising management platform that delivers the workflow efficiencies needed to stay on top of the brand awareness campaign, reach into creative, deliver brand lift and facilitate easy optimizations.

It's a great business to be in!