Package-Goods Brand Earns $1.28 Million in Sales From $1 Million Social-Media Campaign

Package-goods brands are still cautious about social media, figuring that the return on investment can’t be accurately measured. After all, marketing on Facebook or MySpace might generate a conversation but not necessarily a sale. Now, however, a method is emerging to relate one to the other, potentially eliminating a major impediment.

What it reaped

Recent research from ComScore, MySpace and Dunnhumby presented at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:Think 2009 conference in late March suggests that even relatively small outlays on social networks by package-goods brands can result in offline sales impact and deliver positive return on investment.

Generally, the ROI tool of choice for consumer package goods — marketing-mix models that rely on econometric analysis of changes in retail scanner data — can’t pick up the impact of the relatively small five- and six-figure outlays package-goods brands make on digital media.

To overcome that, MySpace teamed with ComScore, which uses a panel of more than 1 million people in the U.S. to track internet usage, and Dunnhumby, which runs loyalty programs for supermarket retailers and has access to loyalty-card purchase data from 59 million people in the U.S. The two panels include 60,000 people who are part of both databases, creating a single-source database that allows a definitive look at how internet ads affect offline purchases.

ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni last year approached fellow Information Resources Inc. veteran John LaRocca, VP-U.S. insights at Dunnhumby — which runs the loyalty program for supermarket heavyweight Kroger Co., among others — about combining efforts to measure digital campaigns.

 

Full article by Jack Neff Ad Age