Print advertising is the golden child. Everybody loves it and doesn’t care if you can’t fully measure it. Its main purpose is to generate awareness of the brand. If it converts to a sale, then it is considered to be a bonus. When you do a direct comparison from online to offline, online ads allow you to know exactly how many people could have viewed the ad and how many actually clicked on it. While a print publication may have a circulation of say 1.3 million, you never really know how many people took it off the coffee table. Online ads allow you to buy the exact amount of impressions and while you may not get every eyeball to see your ad, at least you can measure it better.

Branding is the process of creating an association between a symbol/object/emotion/perception and a product/company with the goal of driving loyalty and creating differentiation. Brand Awareness is making the brand “top of mind” to consumers. Therefore, why is this less important online than off?

It’s Not All About Conversions

The term online brand value is another way to identify value in online advertising. In an article written by Click Z in 2006, called Online Brand Metrics Revealed the author Shane Atchinson wrote:

“If your conversion rate is 7 percent, what's the monetary value of the other 93 percent of visitor activity taking place on your Web site? This other category of behavior, which represents "online brand value," is a largely unknown area and a tremendous measurement opportunity.”

According to an IAB Market Poll of 1,000 online consumers, even when a consumer is exposed to an online ad banner promoting something that they want, most consumers don’t click immediately. Instead, according to the IAB Market Poll, 55% “remember or write down the company or product and check it out later.”

How to Measure Brand Value

In that same article by Shane Atchinson, he listed some great metrics to measure online brand value such as:

• Total traffic volumes as it relates to total brand impressions and total revenue ( I would also say the total traffic volumes to the site)
  
• Volume and percentage of return customers (or traffic to the site)
  
• Total views and visit duration with branded content (on the site)
  
• Volume and percentage of brand keyword searches (this one is important)
  
• Visits to a online store locator
  
• Total views of advertising spots online and passalongs
  

If you consider all of these metrics, it paints a much larger picture for your brand. It provides another method to measure the success of an online campaign that isn’t all about conversion rates.