The driving force of this evolution is the need for the medium to gain acceptance among traditional advertisers as an effective channel to achieve their marketing goals, whether it's branding or direct response. In particular, the medium must shed its image as the ugly step child of media - one that's different from the rest of the media family, such as TV and print.
To do this, the industry has come out with a plethora of research to prove its worth. First came the branding effectiveness studies showing how the web could lift branding metrics cost-effectively. Next came cross media studies showing how the web, when used in a multimedia campaign, could synergistically work together to achieve branding objectives. More recently, a new research movement is centred on showing how the web is helping drive the evolution of media consumption habits. With specific audience segments, such as business decision-makers and teenagers, the web has become a lead medium to reach them, as demonstrated by the time they spend online and content consumption habits.
Moving beyond where the research left off, tools are now being developed to allow advertisers and agencies to estimate and track GRPs, reach and frequency. Although the verdict is still out in terms of validity, what seems certain is that the way online media is planned, bought, measured and analysed will also evolve.
However, before one can fully leverage the overwhelming evidence supporting online advertising, and take a 'gung ho' dive into using these new tools, the industry needs to also begin addressing the fundamental metric which online advertising is based on - impression.
Online advertising revolves around the sacred impression, from the way advertising is planned, bought, sold, tracked and reported.
However, online's media brethren all revolve around the person (aka reader, viewer, listener). So, for online to be truly accepted into the traditional media family, it needs to move from being centred on the impression to the person. This doesn't mean the death of the impression or click. Instead, both metrics will become measures derived from reaching a person (or unique user in web lingo), not vice versa.
Online advertisers, agencies and publishers must come together and develop industry standards to sell, track and report (publisher/ad serving/research side) web media. By doing so, agencies and advertisers can plan and buy campaigns that not only speak the language of traditional advertisers, but exactly measure and analyse each user reached and frequency against during and immediately after the campaign. Once this can be done, online will be closer to losing its step child 'new media' stigma and will be considered part of the 'traditional media' family.
