Microsoft Unveils New Advertising Metric

Microsoft Corp. today announced Engagement Mapping, a new approach to managing and measuring the effectiveness of online campaigns that goes beyond the current “last ad clicked” standard. For the last decade, virtually all ad campaign reporting methodologies associate sales, leads and Web traffic simply to the last click or ad exposure. Engagement Mapping takes into account for the first time all the various online touchpoints and interactions a consumer experiences before an eventual sale. Microsoft’s new proposed ad-measurement metric is now called “Engagement Mapping.” And its “Engagement ROI” (return on investment) is a new integrated reporting capability for the Atlas Media Console, one of aQuantive’s ad platforms that is now owned by Microsoft. Engagement ROI will take into account “the impact that recency, frequency, size and ad format (such as rich media and video) have on a consumer’s online path to action.” The unstated implication: Users don’t buy a product because they discovered it via Google search. Instead, people visit a number of different Internet sites before buying. Tracking this behavior is important, as Brian McAndrews, Microsoft’s Senior Vice President of Advertising and Publishing Solutions, explained last year, as “the site that gets credit for prompting a user’s visit is the one that gets paid for it.”
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1216

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-25EngagementMappingPR.mspx?rss_fdn=Press%20Releases