Nielsen Watches you Shop

It's easier to people watch than to start a conversation with strangers. That's what Nielsen is doing in grocery shopping research. Using in-store cameras, Nielsen is set to monitor our shopping patterns in over 50% of the US' grocery and retail stores. It's as important to see what shoppers are doing as it is to know what they are thinking. And this isn't a panel, this is all of your shoppers. This trend towards behavioral monitoring is worth keeping an eye on.

Google's Tracking That for Free too..

Google just announced a new service to track users' Internet activity through web-servers' databases. The idea is to let advertisers see where they should put their ads. This rivals leaders like Nielsen and comScore, who use less-than-perfect panel based tracking. And Google is offering this for free. I'm curious to see how Nielsen responds.

Linking TV and Web Experience

It seems like Google does everything. For marketers, one more offering just added to the list. Google Analytics now links web site metrics with its TV ad slots so that you can match when your ads ran with changes in online traffic. This is worth watching.

Technographics Ladder

InsightBuzz introduced me to Forrester's segmentation of social media users. This "Social Technographics Ladder" distinguishes between six degrees of online involvement ranging from creators to the uninvolved.


It's fun to see what profile customers have, but I wonder how their activity online relates to their offline consumer behavior. And are the most vocal really the most influential in their circle of friends?

Engagement Measured

Measuring the interactions users have with a web site helps tell us how engaged they are with the message or brand. A neat tool for this is Compete. It's a free service that let's you look at things like visitor counts, average number of page views or time spent on website (pictured below).

Keeping Up

The Economist recently ran a feature about mobile communication. It basically explains how modern technology (like cell phones and wireless) is changing everything about how we live from our relationships to our interactions and our thought process.

Marshall McLuhan was right: The medium is the message.

Figuring out how to measure this interactive, instant communication is key. Campaigns that use social networks, blogs, RSS feeds and tagging, for example, are not driving purchase intent, directly. Most dependent variables in these media have something to do with the idea of engagement or influence. In terms of the purchase funnel, this is about consideration and brand familiarity. I'm curious to see if/what standard emerges for ad effectiveness measurement here.

Measurement 2.0

Early web-measurement was straight-forward. Assess a few static items like page-views or click-thru rates and you see the reach of your ads.

Now the web is getting more complicated, and so is research.

New internet-based media like social networks, blogs, video/photo posts and widgets can show the interaction consumers have with campaigns, products and ideas through comments, 'friending', links, posts and downloads. This can gauge consumer's involvement- it's exciting that we are increasingly focusing on tracking their overall experience, not the media use itself. I wonder if it's possible to create industry-standard metrics across these media, like GRPs for TV and print, to assess interactive engagements.