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Online Advertisers Must Deploy Campaigns That Match The Behavior Of Europe's Multi-Channel Consumers, Says Forrester

Amsterdam, Netherlands, April 6, 2001 . . . Net-based advertising will grow to €6 billion, or 5% of all advertising spend in 2005, but to exploit this potential, marketers must redefine their own goals and organization, according to a new Report by Forrester Research B.V. (Nasdaq: FORR). Net-based advertisers will steer agencies and media to integrative scenarios and new metrics for ads that mirror consumer behavior through multiple devices.

"The challenge of integrating offline and online campaigns will be compounded by the emergence of new interactive devices like mobile phones and iDTV set-top boxes -- vying for the same consumers' attention and advertisers' budgets," said Forrester analyst Diana Janssen. "Marketers must embrace the more ambitious, integrative framework of digital marketing -- redefining their goals, their roles, and their metrics around interactive scenarios designed to create end-to-end, cross-channel consumer experiences. To exploit the full potential of interactivity, marketers must drop traditional one-way, one-time, one-size-fits-all advertising campaigns. Instead, executives must use interactive scenarios in fitting with interactive media."

To create an integrated consumer experience, interactive scenarios require teams to cooperate within the firm across the departmental boundaries of communications, direct marketing, sales, and customer service. Executives must use the Net's tracking capacity to measure advertising effectiveness across all stages of interactive scenarios -- from awareness creation to customer service. Instead of zooming in on the distribution metrics that determine ad prices, marketers must develop action and diagnostic metrics.

Forrester advises that marketers should not only negotiate CPMs but also question their measurement and require access to login and traffic audits from third parties like the UK ABC. They should judge their performance-based deals through new, more pointed result measures than just click-through rates and sales. Marcom managers will then sit down with media planners to reproduce the winning placement and scenario combinations.

"Marketers should assign specific tasks to best- of-breed suppliers and entrust the creative process to dedicated shops, while allocating production, distribution, and technology deployment to traditional and online ad agencies," Janssen added. "To keep the overall process manageable, firms will force their partners to collaborate in eBusiness networks linking independent business units in real time.

"Marketers will turn to creative shops for scenarios that will optimize the media mix to target consumer cohorts and define the rules that adapt campaigns on the fly when customer response drops. Large agencies will coordinate the production and distribution of scenarios to eBusiness ad networks spanning devices and regions. Finally, online ad networks will cooperate with marketers to serve ads in multiple formats. Entering a deeper relationship with media, planners will look beyond sheer traffic and audience quality -- requiring quality context and accountability for their message. Marketers will favor media able to feed scenario designers with in-depth knowledge about their content and their visitors, and firms will choose media for their metrics."

For the Report "Rewriting Online Ads," Forrester spoke with 31 leading advertisers -- 17 large clicks-and-mortar companies and 14 dot-coms. We also spoke with 28 suppliers -- online media and ad agencies.

Forrester Research is a leading emerging-technology research firm, analyzing technology change and its impact on business, consumers, and society. Forrester's "Whole View" of the Internet economy enables clients to weave together Internet commerce initiatives with eBusiness technology to satisfy customers' changing needs. Clients receive continuous research and analysis through Forrester eResearch™ Reports, an array of Advisory Services, Assessment Tools, and topical events. Established in 1983, Forrester is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., with North American Research Centers in San Francisco, Calif., and Toronto, Canada. Forrester's European Research Center is located in Amsterdam, Netherlands, its UK Research Centre is located in London, and its Research Center Deutschland is located in Frankfurt, Germany. Additional information about Forrester Research can be found at www.forrester.com.

Contact:

Clive Savage
European PR Manager
Forrester Research B.V.
+31 20 305 4868
csavage@forrester.com