Last year video went up 42.1% and it’s expected to keep in the double-digits for the next few years.

More spending, means claiming a larger share of the online ad pie. For video, it’s currently at 7.9%, just barely sneaking past Classifieds and Directories. The share is expected to rise to 15% by 2016, keeping it solidly in third place.

Add in search and banners and these three ads account for 80% of all ads sold. Search, accounting for almost half of all online ads by themselves.

The rise in video ad spending is certainly being spurred on by the rise in video consumption. Recent numbers from comScore show that 182 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 23.2 hours of video content per viewer in December.

Video is the new TV but it’s cheaper and easier to put ads on a hit YouTube series than on a hit TV show.

If you need more proof that online video ads are on the rise, answer this. When was the last time you watched a video that didn’t have either a banner or a pre-roll ad? I can’t think of one.

The once powerful Yahoo, just reported a decline in net income of 5% for Q4. Recently, Yahoo invested a lot of money and effort into raising the quality of its content. That gave them the title of the “most trafficked news site on the web,” but apparently that didn’t help their bottom line.

A large part of the problem is the drop in their display advertising business. This used to be the jewel in the crown for Yahoo, but now they’re down 4% quarter over quarter.

In general, display advertising is on the rise. eMarketer’s numbers show a 24.5% increase in ad dollars over last year. Unfortunately, the competition is benefiting from the rise, not Yahoo. Google and Facebook are taking the lead, but why? How did Yahoo go from being the top site for display ads to third place?

It feels like Yahoo is going the way of AOL. Out with the old, in with the new. That leaves us with a two-horse race and that’s not good for marketers or consumers.

With Google and Facebook increasingly out distancing themselves from the pack, is it even possible for Yahoo to get back in the race? Or will it be Google or Facebook for the win from now on in?

The “Your AdChoices” campaign is a new initiative from the DAA, designed to teach consumers about online ads and privacy. They created a website and three videos: “Meet the AdChoices Icon,” “What is Interest Based Advertising,” and “Your Ad Choices and You.”

Wisely, they decided to go with humor in order to make their point. Sadly, they went a little too far.

Each of the three videos is loaded with in-your-face graphics and text that literally screams at you. And then there’s the voiceover which sounds like a combination old-school TV pitchman and a drag-race announcer. (Sunday! Sunday! Sunday at the Atco Dragway!) The videos are funny, for the first 20 seconds, then they’re just annoying.

The Interest Based Advertising video explains that sidebar ads are often generated based on your browser history. The logic being, if you love taxidermy, then you probably visit taxidermy websites. If you don’t, then you won’t get offers for stuffed jackalopes and that would be a real shame.

No, I’m not making this up.

The three videos combined, do make a good case for tracking-based advertising. They make it clear that advertising is necessary if you want the internet to be free. They also go a step farther, explaining how interest-based ads make your browsing more relevant. However, if you don’t like being tracked, one video teaches you how to make it stop.

Overall, it’s a fun campaign that walks the line between consumer protection and doing business. I just wish they’d done it with a little less shouting.

Those days are gone and that’s one of the reasons why online ad spending is predicted to top print ad spending in the coming year. Mind you, I’m not saying I’m personally responsible for the decline in magazine sales, but certainly I played my part!

eMarketer predicts that online ad spending will top $39.5 billion this year, a 23.3% increase over last year. But it’s not just the decline of the offline reader that is giving online ad sales a boost. In general, advertisers have become more comfortable with the concept of online spending. It was bound to happen once the internet wormed its way into our everyday lives.

Online marketing offers more options than print. Better targeting, real-time analytics and the ability to change under-performing ads on the fly. Given the benefits, it’s a wonder it’s taken the big boys this long to make the switch, but I guess old habits die hard.

Overall, eMarketer predicts that the online ad market will reach $62 billion by 2016. This represents a slowdown in growth percentage dropping to single digits in 2015.

The only area unaffected by the rise in online ad spending, is TV. The small screen continues to show growth, with a predicted top off at $72 million in 2016.

Of course, when you compare the cost of 30 seconds of air time on a top TV show, to an add running on a top website, it’s easy to see why TV is still raking in the bucks.

Cost of average Super Bowl ad? $3.5 million. Doesn’t take too many of those deals to make your numbers for the month.

The numbers come from Break Media’s “Digital Video Advertising Trends: 2012″ report and overall, it shows that video advertising is on the rise. Mobile shows the most growth going from use in 39% of video ads in 2011 to an anticipated 55% in 2012.

In order to pay for the increase in video spending, 45% of advertisers are taking the money out of the online display budget while 38% expect an increase in their overall ad budget to cover the difference.

So all this confidence must come with a big reward, right? Could be, say the video advertisers, if only we had a way of measuring our success!

39% of respondents said they measure click-throughs and 38% measured actual product sales. Visits to a brand website and brand recall were also noted but in general advertisers are frustrated with the current measurement options.

Nearly half of all respondents said ROI was hard to measure and 35% said they could measure it but there wasn’t a big enough return. Interesting. We can’t verify the results and we aren’t happy with the results we can verify but we’re going to spend more next year anyway because it’s the thing to do. Sounds kinda like social media spending, doesn’t it?

The reality is, it’s a whole new marketing world. We’ve gone way beyond Whack-a-Mole banners and that’s a good thing, even if we can’t measure individual results. What you can measure is your profit margin. If your company is making more money this year than it made last year, you’re doing something right. If that something is Facebook, mobile apps, or video advertising, keep doing it and do some more. You may not be able to tell exactly which ad influenced a sale, but if the accountants are happy then you’re doing a great job.

Jon Swallen, SVP Research at Kantar Media North America lays it out for you,

“From +4.1 percent in the first quarter, to +2.8 percent in the second quarter and now a barely palpable +0.4 percent for the July to September period. During Q3, an expanding number of the largest marketers became even more conservative with their ad budgets and these reductions have neutralized the healthy spending growth occurring among mid-sized advertisers.”

Aw, that’s not good, is it?

Looking strictly at internet ad spending, it was a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul

Paid Search declined 14.4%, which Kantar says comes from reduced spending by insurance companies, legal and medical services. But Display is sitting pretty with a 15.8% increase in spending. What do you suppose that’s all about?

As for the rest of it, it’s kind of dismal. Spanish Language Magazines are still booming, but otherwise print is still hurting. Local radio is hanging in there and syndicated TV is doing well.

Deep Pockets

Who is behind all the spending? Automotive spent the most with $9,908.4 million. Local Services came in second with $7,144.2 million. The biggest percentage of change goes to Direct Response. They’re up 10.6 percent in Q3. That’s good news for all you insomniac shoppers.

Breaking it down by advertiser, Procter & Gamble spent $2,127.2 million, giving them the top slot. AT&T, General Motors and Comcast follow.

Here are the top ten, looking only at internet spend.

Add and subtract and in the end, internet spending is up. But I’m still wondering why Paid Search took such a dive. Any conspiracy theories you’d like to mention? I’m listening.

He stated that consumers must be given a choice as to how much of their personal data is tracked, but it’s up to the ad industry, not the government, to make it so.

“We at the FTC have no interest in shutting down the Internet party,” he said. “Our only concern is that, if guests understand there could be a cover charge to the party [in the form of giving up some privacy], they should be able to make meaningful choices about how much they’ll pay.”

This comes just as the Digital Advertising Alliance released an up-dated set of principles regarding online data collection.

The new rules prohibit the use of online data as a means of determining medical care eligibility, credit or insurance eligibility or any employment-related decisions.  It also requires sites to adhere to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rules when collecting data on children under 13 and it requires explicit permission to collect medical or pharmaceutical data.

As much as this is a step in the right direction, privacy advocates fear it’s not enough mostly because Alliance membership is voluntary. If an ad network has no intention of following the rules, they don’t have to join the Alliance. And it’s not like consumers are going to limit their web surfing to sites that use only compliant networks.

Networks that do agree to the rules then break them, could be subject to fines and further investigation by the FTC. The Accountability Program recently released their findings on their first cases. They say all six companies responded in a timely manner, changing their data collection policies within weeks of being notified of a problem.

Liebowitz says that as long as the FTC sees the industry working together to prevent misuse of online data collection, they’ll stay on the sidelines. But if we can’t all play nice, then the government is ready to step in with new rules and laws that will apply to everyone, like it or not.

Now take that mindset over to advertising. When a sales rep is trying to sell their leftovers it implies that what he or she is pushing has been passed over by those who are picky about their ad placements. As a result, there are inventory gaps that occur and you get to choose from the crumbs leftover on the display table.

Not very appealing, huh? Well, now imagine that Microsoft, Aol, and Yahoo have announced that they are looking to empty their ad refrigerators, if you will, as a team effort. It’s kind of like a garage sale for leftover display ad space. Let’s just say that the response is not exactly overwhelming.

The LA Times reports

In a deal announced Tuesday, the three tech giants said they would pool their resources to sell leftover ad space beginning in January.

“While this collaboration could drive some incremental yield improvements for the portals’ unsold display inventory, we believe it is unlikely that the combination of inventory can spur significant increases in overall display ad revenue given market share challenges,” J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth said in a research note. “We believe this agreement comes more from a position of weakness as all three players attempt to create a compelling alternative to Google for marketers and agencies.”

Wow, tell it like it is, Doug. Facebook and Google are gobbling up a lot of the online ad budgets these days and it will be critical for these remaining players to figure out just how they can compete. Can they do it?

Image Credit: Joe Belanger / Shutterstock

First is the Social Sentiment Slider. The slider is a sponsored poll that is attached to a piece of content on Yahoo’s site.

Here’s what it looks like:

We can’t see the article, but presumably it’s a news feature about the rise in luxury item sales, or something along those lines. People move the slider to express their opinion, the percentages change and then they can post that opinion directly to Facebook.

There’s no doubt that social engagement will help brand awareness, but there’s also a potential pitfall. The ad sponsor doesn’t get to choose the slider question, Yahoo does. In the above case, it can be disconcerting to see a high percentage to the negative side (Status) when you’re promoting a luxury car right underneath.

In the grand scheme, it’s probably a case of “no visibility is bad visibility,” since people can help but be aware of the ad as they chime in on the instant poll.

Living Ads

Yesterday, Yahoo introduced Livestand. This is an iPad reader app that presents you with content from a (not so) long list of news sources. It’s less about text and more about graphics. It’s about bringing you new information in a fast, easily consumed way.

To go along with that, they’ve launched Living Ads. These interactive pages walk and talk and tell a story. They invite the reader in for a look around and they allow the user to control the pace. Imagine a TV commercial where you can turn the corner and see what’s going on out of camera range, or zoom in on a record and play it.

They call it “where motion and emotion meet” and it’s an excellent way of drawing a consumer into the world of a specific brand. Again, it’s about keeping the reader on the page longer and for now, at least, these ads are so novel, they should work.

They better work — they cost around 500,000 and they don’t use clicks as a measurement of success.

The best thing about Living Ads is that they’re made for the iPad. They aren’t web ads that just happen to show up on the tablet. They’re a whole new animal that takes advantage of what the iPad has to offer.

Tablets are the only “active lean back” media. It provides the active engagement of a computer with the lean back, relaxed mode that is TV. For that, we have to design all new ways of providing content and advertising and Yahoo has taken a big step in that direction.

Want to see Living Ads in action? Watch a demo at yahoolivingads.com.

Bloomberg reports that AOL is cutting back to 3 minutes of commercials per hour. If they were previously running 6 minutes per hour, it’s no wonder they had trouble keeping listeners tuned in.

AOL Radio’s General Manager Lisa Namerow says that too many ads was the most common complaint among listeners. Not surprising, as we’ve learned that consumers have very different feelings about ads in different formats.

For example, TV watchers tolerate, and sometimes even enjoy, the commercials that run during their favorite shows. But surveys have shown that people don’t like seeing ads when they watch those same shows online. Maybe it’s simply a case of not knowing how to complain when it’s a TV or radio ad. With online, it’s easy to hit that contact us button and grouse.

AOL is hoping that the reduction in ads will help raise the number of listeners. The site has had a 25% drop in users over the past year and that hasn’t helped AOL’s bottom line.

At least AOL has advertisers. As popular as Pandora is with users, they’ve had a hard time attracting marketers. Bloomberg suggests this may have something to do with an unconventional ad format that blends 15 second audio ads with display and video spots.

The AOL Radio player page is bordered with display ads at the top and to the right, but this is radio. People turn it on and then hide it behind another window. If you want to reach this audience, it’s got to happen through the headphones and not on the page.

If AOL’s less equals more theory works out, they’ve got a plan in place in that should counter the loss in monthly revenue. Two plans actually, a $3.99 “Radio Plus” plan and a $9.99 on-demand plan which will both be completely ad free.

With their shiny new interface and simple navigation, AOL Radio could end up being a contender.

It can be hard to advertise diapers without going into the realm of bodily functions, but this nasty commercial takes the. . . dare I say. . . cake? It’s even worse than last year’s offensive ad by Huggies where they implied that babies were sexy when they wore their new line of jeans diapers. Yikes.

Other best of the worst ads includes the new AT&T commercial where the wife (whom I thought was the man’s mother) goes off on her geeky husband when he tells her he signed up for a new texting plan and the AT&T spider spot. Yuck.

“Most Grating Performance By a Human” went to the lone flashmob guy who is a victim of a late text message. “Worst Abuse Of An Existing Song” goes to Swiffer’s “What About Love” ad which should also win the “awkward” award. Every time I see these pieces of dirt complaining about their lack of love, I feel an ache for the actors who were forced to say these ridiculous lines.

Before you plan your next campaign, here are the winners (losers?) for “Trend That Needs To Stop Being A Trend.”

With 29.4%, the top “make it stop” trend is men who can’t stand their woman like in the Klondike Bar commercial where men are rewarded for listening to their wives talk for a few seconds.

A close second is the “candid camera” style commercial with 28.91% of the vote. The Ford press conference ads are particularly grating and not long ago, another company got in big trouble with mommy bloggers when they tried to pull one off.

Want to find out what else missed the mark? Get the full poll results at The Consumerist and then think long and hard about what you read before you release you green-light your next advertising campaign.

Google and Nielsen got together on this study to determine the effectiveness of multi-screen marketing. They gathered groups of people and had them watch a 15-second video ad for a Volvo S60 sedan. Some saw the ad only on TV. Some saw it on TV and on a smartphone. Then they mixed up more combos including ads on PCs and tablets.

Here’s what they got:

Look at that nice hike in recall. Now, my first thought was, of course recall was better because they saw the ad four times where the base-level group only saw it once. Then I noted this line in the results, “different combinations of screens controlling for frequency.” So, I guess that means that the TV only people also saw the ad four times.

In addition to better overall recall, multi-screen viewers were also able to pick out more details, leading Google to state that engagement was higher. When asked what kind of Volvo was featured in the ad, 22% of the TV only group said a 4-door sedan but 39% of the multi-screen group got it right.

Now, not everyone can afford a TV commercial, but businesses of every size can advertise online, and on a variety of mobile devices. So these results still apply, even if you’re just marketing a mom and pop bicycle shop. The multi-screen approach allows you to reach your customer at the right place and the right time. The PC ad might be just the thing when they’re looking to put a bike under the tree this Christmas, but a FourSquare deal is better when they’re on the go and needing to buy a new bike tire.

Are you making good use of the multi-screen method?

The second quarter of 2011 was record breaking, with a reported $7.7 billion over $6.2 billion from the same time last year.

Small Screen, Big Payoff

Although growth was good in all segments, video took top honors with growth equal to 42.1% over last year. Video is slowly becoming a viable option for advertisers of all sizes since video hosts such as YouTube have made it easier to do. You also have to look at the sheer number of videos that are popping up online. Now advertisers can choose from a wide variety of short form videos or hook their wagon to full-length TV shows and movies.

Just take a look at the new fall, TV season. It wasn’t so long ago missing a season premiere meant waiting for spring reruns in order to see what you missed. Now, viewers can find those shows on network websites, iPad apps or OnDemand, and often within hours of the original TV airing. And every episode comes with advertising attached, ads that can’t be skipped over, as they can be with a DVR.

A Banner Year

Video may be growing fast, but most of the money is still going to search (49% of the total.) Right behind that is display, with 37% of the spend, equaling more than $5.5 billion in the first half of this year. That’s a 27.1% increase over the same time last year.

David Silverman of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP thinks that accountability is responsible for the rise in ad revenue. Every year, we get more effect tools for measuring the ROI of online ads and that means companies can be confident about where they spend their marketing dollars.

The big boys like Ford, Coca-Cola and Campbell’s are using the program, and AOL’s Tim Armstrong says that the response to the ads themselves has been good. He says folks stay on Project Devil ads almost four times longer than the industry average. In this case, time really is money, because longer engagement times usually result in conversions and better brand recognition.

Now, AOL is trying something even more spectacular — adding e-commerce to ads. In this scenario, a Project Devil ad would expand outward to include a version of a product’s sale page from the actual website.The ad can be opened to full-screen without ever leaving the website you came in on and it stays that way, even as you go through the process of actually buying the item.

Getting from “I want” to “I bought”

Here’s an example. Say you’re reading the entertainment news on AOL when you hit an ad for Best Buy that shows the big DVD releases for this week. Gotta have Johnny Depp’s latest film. Click the DVD and the ad expands to show all the details. Action, adventure and fun outtakes, too! Even a video clip to get you really excited. Want to buy it? Just click and complete the transaction. When you’re done. Close the window and finish reading all about who is dating who in Hollywood.

The idea is to streamline the steps between “I want” and “I bought.” This is important because potential customers fall away with every additional move they have to make. The quicker you can get them from point A to point B, the higher your conversion rate will be. Don’t give them a chance to change their mind and don’t allow them to be distracting by having to move from one website to another.

It’s pretty brilliant concept if they can sell it. Problem number one is the cost. Again, it’s likely that only the big boys will be able to afford this kind of ad. And since it will be specific to AOL, it’s not like they can lower their cost by placing the ad all over the web.

The second problem is on the consumer side. People are already wary of sending their credit card information out into cyberspace and this feels even less secure. It’s not, because even though you feel like you’re still on the original page, AOL says the transaction will actually be happening on the advertiser’s site. Meaning, it’s no different than actually going to that site and buying the product.

Overall, it’s good to see AOL trying to shake up the banner ad and make it more relevant to the way we navigate the web. It also feels akin to the way apps run on a tablet. In other words, Project Devil is the future, now they just have to find away to make it affordable so everyone can participate in the program.

So it’s no wonder that consumers are willing to give a little more of themselves to a brand, as long as there’s a prize at the end.

SocialVibe and KN Dimestore recently conducted a survey to discover just how helpful incentives can be. They placed interactive ads on sites such as Causes.com and Pandora and on games like Farmville. Visitors were asked to play a branded game or take a survey and in return they’d receive an appropriate reward. For Farmville it was game credits, air-time without ads on Pandora and donations on Causes.com.

What they found was that 91% of people pay attention to the brand message when they interact with an ad. 48% said that they may have initially gone in just to get the reward, but ended up staying for the messaging anyway.

They also found that more people came away with a positive feeling about a brand after participating in an interactive activity. This positive feeling carried over into purchase intent with one product seeing a 56% lift as compared to the control group. And how about this one:

“Consumers exposed to an incentivized engagement were 161% more likely to visit the brand’s website.”

The survey also proves that incentives equal conversions by monitoring ticket sales after participants interacted with an incentivized movie campaign. Sales were 22% higher than those who were not given an incentive to view the ad.

Jay Samit, CEO for SocialVibe says,

“People go online with a purpose, and most forms of advertising, such as display and pre-roll, are disruptive and not additive to that experience. The way to capture a consumer’s real attention is to respect their time commitment through the value-exchange approach.”

It’s also interesting to note that the value of the incentive doesn’t have to be very high in order to get a positive outcome. You don’t have to hand out cash in order to get people to participate. Virtual merchandise and coupons are both very popular, inexpensive options.

Your customer’s time is valuable, so why not give them a little something special just for paying attention? If SocialVibe is right, it will come back to you two-fold in the end.

In the past, experts have dismissed these kinds of claims, saying that a lot of ads are being clicked on by accident, but MediaMind says not true. Their stance is that mobile is simply experiencing the same kind of “new and fascinating” curve that banner ads had when they first asked people to punch the monkey.

Positioning also plays a big part in the high CTR. Says MediaMind:

Mobile banners aren’t just on top of the innovation curve, but also occupy a bigger portion of the screen relative to browser based banners. In many cases, there is only one banner on the page. Furthermore, people tend to browse with their phone closer to their eyes, unlike the screen of a laptop or a desktop.

Simple, but so true. In addition, they found that iPhones had the highest click-through rates, Blackberry the lowest.

All the Time in the World

When comparing results based on the time of day, MediaMind found mobile and browser to be nearly opposite. Banner ads traditionally offer up the most return between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm, when most folks are using their office computers to browse the web. Mobile peaks between 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm, which leans toward that concept that many people are using their mobile phones at home.

The one downside to all of this is that mobile advertising is more expensive than browser advertising, so a higher click rate may not mean a more profitable return on investment. That’s why they recommend a cross-channel mix, running browser-based banners during the day, and mobile ads at night. In theory, that should give you all the oomph you need to get the best return on your advertising dollars.

The strategy is also designed to help them claw back some ad spending that has ended up in the hands of ad networks in recent years.

Executives from all three companies briefed a group of top Web publishers and ad buyers about the plan at a dinner presentation last night in Manhattan. AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft hope to convince big Web properties to share some of their ad inventory as well, and to get big ad holding companies to funnel some of their purchases through the consortium.

AllThingsD, cutely, uses an image of the Three Musketeers and even throws an “All for One!” into the article’s title. This would all be perfectly appropriate, except for one small details about the consortium.

This one…

Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL have agreed to sell each other’s “Class 2 display” inventory — graphic ads the companies can’t sell on their own and would normally hand over to ad networks.

In other words, the crap ads.

The ads that perform so badly or are so overpriced that neither Microsoft, Yahoo, or AOL can sell them directly–not even with their own skilled sales force. That’s like the Three Musketeers getting together and saying, “I need to keep my sharpest sword for my best fights, but I’m happy to pick up this rusted knife and give it a crack!”

These Class 2 ads are also referred to “remnant inventory.” You know the only other place that uses that term? Carpet stores. You can buy their remnant carpet for cheap, ‘cos it’s oddly shaped and they can’t sell it at full price. Yeah, that’s the way to grow a successful ad business!

What say you Pilgrims?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Early advertising is paying off for the movie biz in a big way as more and more people go online to search for news of coming films. According to an article on MediaPost, studios have seen huge spikes prior to a film’s release such as an 8,510% rise on searches for “The Help” in the past 30 days. That’s a lot of buzz.

What’s interesting about movie advertising is that it has a short shelf life compared to a product like dishwashing detergent or a local cafe. It’s a cycle that is understood by seasonal retailers like those who sell Halloween costumes or Christmas trees. But what if we take The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo scenario and apply that to a Halloween costume webstore? Is ten months too early to begin advertising your wares? How about six months? Does timing even matter anymore?

Certainly, you don’t want to blow your budget on Halloween ads two days before Christmas, but advertising earlier than normal could pay off. Remember, we’re a highly suggestive bunch, so offering deals on Halloween costumes in June might not be as ridiculous as it sounds.

Then there’s the concept of the teaser trailer. These are short clips that are designed to intrigue an audience long before the actual trailer is released. Some don’t even include the name of the movie, such as the teasers for Cloverfield and the new Star Trek movie.

How would that work out for your business? Is there an intriguing visual that you could circulate via social media and YouTube? Something that would get people talking and guessing? The internet has the power to blur holiday shopping cycles. There’s no shelf space to worry about, so you can sell Christmas ornaments 365 days a year, and there are people that will buy them in June as well as December.

Consider this one of those ‘thinking out loud’ posts. Take a few minutes today to think about your seasonal business and how you could extend your season by a few weeks or a few months. If Hollywood can sell a movie ten months before the tickets are available, you can sell Halloween costumes in May.

According to numbers from eMarketer, the majority of B2B marketers say their spend is equal to 5% or less of their company’s revenue. But even though the numbers are tied together, 35% of marketers said they didn’t report their financial contributions to senior management. 33% said they don’t even track their return on investment.

If we talk strictly about smaller B2B companies, it’s easy to see why they aren’t tracking and reporting — because it takes too much time and time is an even tighter commodity than money. There are plenty of tools online to help you gather stats but connecting those stats to income is the tricky part.

The other reason financial return is hard to track, particular in B2B is that it usually means moving a client through a variety of departments. The marketer generates the lead but it’s the sales department that follows through. Along the way there may be other parties involved each getting the buyer closer to writing the check. On a big ticket item, the time lapse from the initial contact to the sale could be months. Unless the company has a follow up system in place, it’s likely the marketer will never know how much revenue was made, or he may hear about it only in passing. “Hey, George bought a software package. That was a good lead.”

Granted, some amount of marketing isn’t going to be quantifiable in terms of direct sales, but what if you could account for every dollar spent by a customer who saw some kind of branded message? That would take in sales from almost every new customer and that has to be equal to more than 5% of your company’s revenue.

Think about it. You could make the best product in the industry, but without marketing, how is anyone going to know to buy it. Time you got credit for all your hard work.

Moat wants to change that with their “No Clicks Campaign.” Their position is that an ad can be engaging without being clicked and they use a heat map to prove it.

The simple logic is that the eye follows the mouse. The heat map shows where a person dragged their mouse and how long they stayed where it landed. Ipso facto, spots that show the warmer colors are effectively grabbing a user’s attention.

The color map I’ve added here is from a Bing demo. The point it makes is that the woman getting into the cab is being bombarded with marketing information on billboards, cab advertising, even on the side of a bus that passes by. She absorbs all of it to varying degrees, and may act on some of it when she gets home. Remember us – the highly suggestible creatures – a Pizza Hut ad on the side of a passing bus might be all it takes to make her chose them over competitor Dominos.

Which brings us back to start-up Moat. Their “No Clicks Campaign” is out to prove that there are meaningful metrics beyond the clickthrough. And though we all know it’s true, quantifying success in a dollars and cents way without clicks is going to be tough. Will brands pay for display ads based on the number of heat signatures that show up on a page?

mediaForge is also looking past the clickthrough, charging their clients based only on “ad engagement.” They’ve launched a new search retargeting ad program, a system that delivers personalized ads based on specific keywords a user typed into a search engine. CEO Tony Zito says,

 ”We are a performance-based company, so we only charge our clients when someone buys something, and we can demonstrate we influenced the purchase.”

In other words, pay us when we prove our efforts drove a customer to buy your product or service. That’s about as fair as it gets. And as long as the customers are buying, it shouldn’t matter if they got there by clicking an ad, through a search page or typing in a URL they remember. It’s all income in the end.