Principle 6: Believe your gut, not the statistics

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Every single day I see another research report talking about statistics of listeners or viewers of a piece of new media. And for every meeting I attend, marketers and clients demand PowerPoint presentations loaded with these numbers. I’ve never witnessed anyone question the validity of these numbers, what they represent, or how they were generated. It’s not like they’re all coming from one well-known standard source like Nielsen.

These measurements become the lynchpin decision factor on whether to buy into a campaign. If they are shown that X numbers of people are watching Y, then the client will feel comfortable about investing. The problem is new media is an emerging technology with undefined structures. Understanding the media and the atmosphere they operate under is far more important than the constantly changing numbers they produce. Each set of statistics is based on a different methodology. While numbers are helpful, they can’t be the only tool for decision making.

The problem is the advertising industry has been ingrained in making decisions based on CPMs (cost per thousands). CPMs are used to answer the key question of “How much is it going to cost me to reach my audience?” Advertisers and media professionals are trained to only make media planning decisions based on this value. It’s the metric they know, understand, and negotiate on.

Unfortunately, new media does not operate like a mass market media. It’s a hyper-targeted media. And the audience for it is not as passive. They’re often influencers. They’re a more valued audience. Unfortunately, we have no tools yet to measure how much more valued these influencers are.

If you’re an advertiser buying a television commercial, you don’t need to understand the technologies and distribution structure of television. That’s because for decades the structure, pricing, and architecture of advertising on television has been set and agreed upon. Conversely, with new media, nothing is set in stone. There are loose architectures that we’ve rallied behind, like podcast sponsorships. But everything in terms of design of content creation and promotion is still very much open for each individual to determine.

At this time, new media production decisions must be done predominantly on gut and done quickly. Spend time understanding the media rather than waiting for new pricing and qualification structures to present themselves. If you wait for numbers to validate your decision, you’ll miss out on opportunities to be the one to create the numbers.

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