Millward Brown Adindex tool reviles better insight for digital campaigns

According to global research agency, Millward Brown, almost all display campaigns in India are evaluated on the basis of Click-Through Rates (CTRs) and Conversion Rates.

But recent research conducted for Vodafone India, for its "Get 3G ready for Rs. 1600" campaign for a 3G Data Card (Oct-Nov'10), made use of Millward Brown's AdIndex® digital measurement tool as a complement to CTRs and Conversion Rates.

The tool is a survey-based approach through which consumers are asked questions about the brand and its attributes ' a set of brand metrics also used to evaluate traditional media campaigns but currently not widely used in India.

AdIndex insights provide a more in-depth picture of campaign performance than CTRs or Conversion Rates alone, including frequency of exposure, site analysis, creative performance, and campaign performance across key brand parameters.

Rajith Nair, Millward Brown India, said: "Both these metrics, although useful, do not give a complete picture of how a campaign has performed.

"The average CTR for most campaigns today is 0.2 percent, while Conversion Rates stand at 6-7 percent. What happens to the remaining larger percent of the audience? What was the impact of the digital campaign on them?

"Measuring digital campaigns on the same set of brand metrics as used in traditional media is still not a default practice in India.

"There is of course a lack of awareness, but with digital spends increasing significantly such advertising effectiveness studies are gaining acceptance."

Amol Kadam, Vodafone India, said: "We believe in the promise offered by digital as a medium, so when we were approached by Millward Brown to commission the study, it caught our attention - especially, since they were going to evaluate our campaign using traditional brand metrics.

"Our agency partner, Maxus Global, was also quite supportive of the idea. When we got the results, the lift on the Awareness and Purchase Intent metrics were quite positive.

"The depth of insights that were provided by way of Creative, Media and Frequency performance, audience profile, and category usage was also quite helpful and has provided us with a benchmark for future campaigns."

The campaign, which was for Vodafone's 3G Data Card, ran for a month with the key objective of increasing awareness and intent to purchase. The results revealed that the campaign exceeded industry norms in terms of both of these key goals.

When the Vodafone campaign scores are benchmarked against other new telecom product launches in Millward Brown's global MarketNorms® database, Online Ad Awareness deltas (or percent of people impacted) are above average, while Purchase Intent scores far exceed industry norms.

According to Vishal Jacob, Maxus India: "The results of this study have been very promising and I am sure a lot of brands like Vodafone will go beyond clicks and leads to measure the impact of online display campaigns."

Vodafone was ranked as the world's second most valuable mobile operator brand last year in Millward Brown's BrandZ Top 100 ranking, and the tenth most valuable global brand overall.