Newspaper publishers have always been looking for a clear and concise way to show value in a customers print display advertising, but with no easily trackable statistics, the value proposition always ran the risk of coming into debate.  This is why so many who understood banner advertising were either scared or delighted with the mediums acceptance, because through online advertising an ad and its related user action could now be clearly measured.  For the most part, showing and advertiser how many impressions their ad received and or click-through’s sufficed and this has been the case for the past 10 years.  Now however, publishers are coming up against more web savvy customers or agencies, who are demanding more value for their online advertising spend.  It is because of the ever evolving advertiser mindset and dollar, why we suggest that publishers start to ask more questions of their advertisers willingness to share their current web analytics, to aid in gauging an online campaigns awareness impact, as a part of the committed ROI.  What we mean by ‘awareness impact’ is finding a way to measure those customers who would have seen an ad, but did an independent search on the product/organization/brand before calling or taking any action to purchase. Excerpts of an article we found by Augustine Fou provides tips for publishers when looking to better measure the total affect of an advertisers online campaign.  Fou’s tips may not work for smaller businesses who are just now building their online presence, but it would work for most.  What’s also important to note is that Fou’s tips prove the importance of deeper relationships with our advertisers, given the type of information you’ll need to ask for.

Tips for Running Awareness Campaigns to Calculate ROI

• Ensure that online destinations are set up prior to launching paid awareness campaigns. So when people go online to search and do research after being inspired by the awareness campaign, they will find you and the specific information they are looking for.
• Use made-up words when possible, so lift in search is detectable. Brand names that are also generic words like axe, tag, open, etc. will not be detectable about the noise of unrelated searches containing the same word.
• Search-engine optimize your site and online assets, so specific information can be found and is mapped specifically to the “missing link” the potential customer is trying to solve.
• Have detailed analytics in place to measure the “conversion funnel” that can end in a sale or another action and is a known proxy for sales (e.g. advertiser knows X percent of coupons printed online get redeemed with a purchase offline.)

Source: Augustine Fou, April 2009