When banners started appearing on the Internet, it seemed to be a marketeer’s wet-dream. We can finally measure! The click became king, the magic gauge with which an advertising message could be judged. So much better than TV, a poster or a double-spread in a magazine…
Fast-forward a decade or so and the dream now looks more like a measurement nightmare. Most advertisers have more-or-less managed to properly measure clicks. However, what happens post-click is still a mystery to most people. This is because it turns out that online advertising only solved a small part of the puzzle of “how much do I get back if I spend $X here?” As a higher percentage of spend migrates online, this becomes ever more important to get right.