In order to have a true measure of whether media moves product, it would seem obvious that you inherently need to measure at least two things: the media and the product. A true measurement of whether a medium 'works' - i.e., it carries a message that makes people buy a product - has to weigh those two aspects equally.
Yet it seems that the onus for proving effectiveness tends to be skewed towards the media. In other words, although a true ROI measurement can only be a 50/50 split between media and product, the tendency is that media are expected to provide 100% of the 'proof'.
A recent panel discussion at a TV Week Upfront Summit between ABC's Sales President Mike Shaw and AT&T's Marketing Vice President Daryl Evans, would appear to illustrate this imbalance of responsibility quite effectively. Click this to read the whole article. Here's an excerpt:
"ABC's Sales President Mike Shaw has said for some time the network is eager to go beyond commercial ratings or survey-based research to prove the ads it runs are effective. He reiterated his position Thursday, saying ABC is willing to put its neck on the line with a metric that shows ads in a "Lost" or a "Desperate Housewives" actually move products off the shelves.
The problem is, Shaw says, marketers are unwilling to share the data on sales results to allow ABC to prove it.
And that collaboration doesn't appear to be coming anytime soon -- at least with one of the country's largest advertisers. "We're not going to share proprietary data ... not in my lifetime," said Daryl Evans, an AT&T marketing vice president.
