So said Steve Tisa, Director of Web Strategy and Marketing Operations at Kronos, to members of the New England Direct Marketing Association during his presentation yesterday.

And while creative types might tend to disagree, Tisa made a strong case for adapting new technologies to catalyze marketing accountability and optimization.

Options

“Google Analytics does about 85% of the stuff I need to get done,” Tisa explained to the group. “Unfortunately, the 15% it can’t do is a bit of a problem.”

Citing GA’s inability to provide meaningful engagements and it’s lack of scalability, Tisa is looking for other options without having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on highest end analytics systems.

Starting with a free system, though, was a good idea for people finally going down the path of analytics for the first time, he mentioned.

Why Do It?

According to Brian S. Chertok, Director Marketing Programs for Kronos, A/B and multivariate are simply not possible without understanding what numbers are driving success.

“Establishing a baseline for success is absolutely crucial,” he explained. “Otherwise, you’re simply throwing things online and hoping for good results.”

Google needs: more inventory of quality content to place higher quality ads against. The worst slap to Google wouldn’t be prohibiting WSJ links from its search, but prohibiting its AdWords Content clients from being able to purchase display ad space in the Wall Street Journal (and its brethren).

Further, I believe that Google’s own data is pointing to what Conversion Associates sees as well: That for most advertisers, the post-click performance that comes from sites with high quality content (which does not mean, but can be a high impression website), tends to be higher than those places where the content is a feed. This is why Eric Schmidt is saying, what we have been discussing with many of our publishers that the focus of innovation (to be digital is to carry the burden of having to innovate as a business process) must be placed not on “traffic” numbers – so important in the CPM business model – rather, on discovering new performance metrics that surround visitor engagement.

News Corp needs: to discover a method to increase the price of their digital ad inventory. This process must begin with getting out of their own way, as at present Mr. Murdoch seems to retreat on the idea that the present inventory isn’t worth more today than the price News is chargeing, for example the following statement from Mr. Murdoch: “A business model that relies primarily on online advertising cannot sustain newspapers over the long term. The reason is simple arithmetic. Though online advertising is increasing, that increase is only a fraction of what is being lost with print advertising.”

Dear Rupert, please apply what you know – When the arithmetic doesn’t work in your favor, buy the teacher and change the question. So what he says is true: the prices of CPM continue to go down as more Ad Networks proliferate and struggle to produce quality ads against the quality content. Rupert, your ad serving is not worthy. Raise the price of the ads, especially to the Ad Networks – like Google – to advertise on your site. But we know Eric wouldn’t like that would he?

The second thing, identify what Mr. Schmidt clearly recognizes, and oddly Mr. Murdoch seems to be skittish about – quality of the engagement that the WSJ and other strong publications produce – and that advertisers should and will be willing to pay more than what they do currently to get this quality. The present hurdle today we believe to this whole conversation is the process of proving this lesson, this reality, to the advertisers.

We also believe that the publisher needs to become more involved as a business to innovate methods where they control and present these results rather than relying on 3rd party ad networks, like Google. Granted, we also believe that there is a model to pay for the quality content. However, based on the results we see for our clients coming out of publishers with quality content, the gold is in the hills of simply charging more for the existing advertisements.

The solution is to innovate and improve relevant ads and innovating on improving relevant ads to readers over time and for the publisher to control more of their own inventory, and finally improve thier ability to communicate results to the end client.

Oh, do you see that that last sentence of advice to publishers is exactly the Google playbook. To restate, Google over the last 6 years:

* 1. publish relevant pages for visitors,
* 2. obsess about the user’s concept of what is “relevant”,
* 3. attach this to a measurable digital event, or proclamation of user action (i.e. a click),
* 4. develop a system to allow this event to be the center of a revenue model, rather than on the number of visitors,
* 5. create a platform to show advertisers their results (AdWords reporting, later Google Analytics),
* 6. in the process of ad creation force best practices (you can’t use superlatives in adwords, and automatic split testing available),
* 7. advertisers see the value, users experience relevance,
* 8. go Scrooge McDuck (at least this step should be familiar to Mr. Murdoch).

At the end of the day, it is important to see what both men agree on: We are at the dawn of a very exciting time in journalism. The sooner the business side of the house can catch up with better models of selling advertising the quicker publishing can thrive. At the end of the day, it’s still about making pages and producing great quality to your readers, but also, expressing to advertisers that your happy readers make happy customers for them. It can be done.

Relevant Links Here:

WSJ (may need to be a subscriber)

Eric Schmidt’s 12/1 Op-ed: http://bit.ly/6AGqB4

Rupert Murdoch’s 12/8 Op-ed: http://bit.ly/717IeN

Analysis from Silicon Valley Watcher, Tom Foremski (fmr of Financial Times): http://bit.ly/4MBVGM