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Are all impressions created equal?
By Justin Goldsborough | August 31st, 2010
Impressions are like the veterans of the social media measurement team. The security blanket, if you will. If you’re a Yankees fan, they’re the Mariano Rivera. Like the Colts? They’re the Peyton Manning.
PR and Marketing pros feel comfortable tracking impressions. And corporate America feels comfortable tracking success based on them. There are exceptions, but for the most part a strong earned or paid impressions number will get you accolades from peers and senior leadership.
Here’s where my sport analogy fails a bit. Rivera and Manning will eventually retire. They won’t be able to anchor their teams efforts forever. On the other hand, impressions aren’t going away. And I don’t think they should. We need to get credit for generating awareness about our client brands. Now I also think we need to account for other behaviors beyond awareness like engagement, advocacy and action. But that’s another post for another time.
So we can agree that impressions are an integral part of our PR and marketing efforts. Always have been, always will be…at least for the foreseeable future. But that doesn’t mean we have to keep valuing impressions the same way we always have historically. Do you think all impressions are created equal? We judge them that way, don’t we? I rarely see a a results report that distinguishes between the types of impressions generated for a client. Or better yet, one that attempts to provide different values for different types of impressions.
Actually, I take that back. There are still some companies that multiply traditional media impressions by a multiplier to factor the pass along rate. And I do see companies differentiate between earned and paid impressions or by channel. But that doesn’t mean they prioritize one over the other.
Why do so few compare and contrast impressions? Does an online ad buy equal a blog post mention? How about a story in a newspaper versus a conversation on a Facebook page?
None of these impressions are the same. They can be ranked and differentiated depending on a brand’s overall goals as well as consumer research. Furthermore, if any impressions should be multiplied, IMO the social media impressions, or what I often refer to as engaged impressions, should get the multiplier. The research backs it up:
- Consumers trust peers (even those they don’t know) over advertising — I believe the stat from Nielsen is 14 percent of people trust advertisements (lecture) while 78 percent trust recommendations from peers (conversation)
- Consumers are 51% more likely to buy from brands they fan on Facebook and 60% more likely to recommend them according to iMedia Connection. The same study says the tendency is even higher on Twitter — 67% more likely to buy and 79% more likely to recommend.
Yet if you compare straight impression numbers across the board, social media is never going to compete with the “reported”impression numbers of a mass media story or advertisement. Now I have heard social media measurement gurus advocate for measuring outcomes and behaviors (as I mentioned before) instead of impressions. And I see validity in that argument. But new measurement methodologies usually take a while to catch on. PR and marketing pros using social media need to build a bridge between traditional impressions measurement and tracking behaviors. Most companies won’t just switch from one to the other. By offering a new way to look at a comfortable measurement, we can begin to shift the management mindset to looking for outcomes and behaviors.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those “shiny new penny” PR pros who thinks traditional media and advertising (online and offline) have gone by the wayside. In fact, they are often the source of initial awareness around a brand or product. But that said, research shows the conversation is what seals the deal for the consumer and more often than not leads to action and brand affinity.
PR and marketing pros have always leaned on impressions to show our value. And they will continue to be a vital measurement worthy of tracking. But our POV as communications professionals needs to evolve with new technology and how the consumer wants to communicate. Looking at results through the same lens we always have is safe. But you could also call it lazy. Our measurement needs to evolve. We can’t count on the veterans forever.
- Does your company/clients still rely on impressions as the most important PR/marketing metric?
- Do you think all impressions are created equal?
- In addition to impressions, what should PR and marketing pros be tracking? How?
August 31st, 2010 at 6:20 am
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August 31st, 2010 at 6:45 am
I don’t think you can compare traditional media impressions to social media impressions because the behaviour of these two media are completely different and using similar measures assumes they are the same.
People pick up a newspaper for one purpose-to read it! Now of course impression #s have never really been accurate, you never know how many of that potential audience *actually* read a specific piece.
That part is the same for social media, but more so, people use social media for many different reasons and reading news may not be on the radar of some. Also numbers are easily inflated by spam bots or bogus follower schemes (with Twitter, for instance) so it’s even more diluted. Point is it’ll never be an apples to apples comparison.
And more importantly-the reason impressions were measured in traditional media is they were the best we had. Today with web analytics we’re rich with our access to data that really we don’t even need to measure ‘impressions’ except perhaps to calculate conversion or click through rates. I think the reason so many flock to impressions online is they just don’t know any better.
By all means, continue to include impressions in measurement, but it should never be the be-all, end-all of PR measurement. We can do so much better.
August 31st, 2010 at 7:08 am
@Kelly Great points across the board, especially about impressions never really being accurate. But so many companies still do use impressions as their highest standard of measurement and lump them all together. It happens a lot.
All I’m advocating is finding a way to value different impressions from different mediums so we at least start t change the way people think. Click thru rates, referrals, conversion are good next steps to introduce into the conversation if there not already there. Eventually, we need to even take it further than that and try to track engagement where two-way conversation is an option, as well as advocacy, since 3rd-party reccos play such a key role in the consumers decision-making process and brand affinity.
I absolutely can see an argument for devaluing impressions numbers or not even measuring them at all. But the reality is that will not fly with most CMOs and PR execs in our world today. So how can we build a bridge between old thinking and new thinking?
August 31st, 2010 at 3:46 pm
I really like you take on this, Justin. I think we are absolutely wrong to try to throw out ALL old metrics in favor of the new, shiny ones. That will never work. There has to be transition time, and until we can find widely accepted metrics for social media, we have to be able to adapt the old metrics to prove its value.
All impressions are certainly not equal, and I will be interested to see how we can use this old standard. Do you multiply all those posts from peers the same? Or do you give those with thousands upon thousands of followers more weight? Where do you draw the line?
This is fascinating stuff. Definitely got me thinkin’!
August 31st, 2010 at 5:29 pm
@Rebecca Thanks for stopping by. Yes, nearly impossible to throw out all old metrics. Traditional leaders in high places won’t allow it :).
You asked the million-dollar question. What should the multiplier be for engaged impressions and is it static or not? I’m still trying to come up with where the 2.1 or 2.5 so many companies use for social media came from. I’ve heard it’s the best guess at pass along rate of a newspaper. But in reality, someone just threw a number out there and it stuck.
Not condoning that tactic, but think it’s important for someone to take a look at what an engaged multiplier might be. Average pass along based on a diverse sample of social media users?
September 3rd, 2010 at 1:18 pm
I actually think your baseball analogy is brilliant. Impressions are like Rivera and Manning or to keep my metaphor’s consistent, like Roger Clements and Manny Ramirez.They ARE going to retire, and soon. Procter & Gamble has already announced that they will no longer pay for eyeballs, only for engagement. That’s at least the first strike against them.
Secondly what matters in social media is real influence, not the proxy influence that impressions have always represented. Yes, the New York Times is more influential than the Berlin Daily Sun because it has a bigger circulation, but only if you are trying to reach a million people. If your’e trying to influence people in Berlin New Hampshire, you better be in the BDS. The same is true with blogs. I might get 300 people to my blog on a good week, but in terms of overall influence in the measurement world I’m in the top 15, at least according to Twitalyzer.
Top management will be won over to engagement and outcome metrics, the moment someone explains to them just how bogus most impression numbers are. When Nielsen and Comscore differ by 35 million in their tallies, that is not a rounding error.That’s the population of California. Do you really want to say to your CEO, “Here are my impression counts, plus or minus California.”
September 3rd, 2010 at 3:38 pm
@Katie Thanks for stopping by. First of all, love the California reference. I will use that one from now on. Is the 35 million from a specific study?
I agree with you that not only engagement, but behaviors like advocacy, influence and action are what we should really be tracking. My only point is that most people — especially execs — don’t do a complete 180 when they’ve done something one way their entire life. IOW, we might have more success if we first get execs to see the difference between mass impressions and social media impressions by explaining the trackable behaviors that can occur as a result of social online impressions. We’re highlighting the differences but speaking their language.
“Top management will be won over to engagement and outcome metrics, the moment someone explains to them just how bogus most impression numbers are.” I hope you are right, but I have seen/heard of many top leaders served stats like that who acknowledge the additional impact social can have but then go right back to valuing impressions overall because that’s how their company model judges success.
Another issue is that as agency reps, we don’t often get access to top-level management to make that case, at least when it comes to large companies. How would you advise agencies to best influence a company’s model that values impressions most high, especially if that agency only touches PR or marketing and not both?
September 7th, 2010 at 2:41 am
The 35 million comes from an IAB study that was done several years ago that prompted the IAB to attempt to align the two firms methodologies. To my knowledge they were never successful.
What we do to wean the addicted off of impressions (and AVE for that matter) is to point out why those numbers are bogus, and suggest they use share of desirable conversation vs the competition (as well as share of desired positioning) and then correlate it to outcomes i.e. online activity or engagement.
September 10th, 2010 at 5:07 am
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