I think there is room for both design and performance, for me it boils down to customer objectives.

Thanks for the post.

Yup, it’s kind of a rant. There’s some decent stuff there all the same, but I can’t blame you for finding it loosely organized and negative. I’ll try to either stay off the soap box or to make more tightly focused rants in the future

I think you rather missed the point of the post. Granted, it’s something of a rant and contains a few points, but the biggest is that online media is, in general, unsuited to the kind of interruption marketing required for effective branding. NONE of that had anything to do with creating the brand – it was focused on methods of ADVERTISING the brand. Doesn’t quite matter how mythic or epic your brand, if no one knows about it, it’ll fail.

And frankly, I’m having a hard time thinking of a mythic air conditioning brand that I’d give a crap about without actually being in the market for a new air conditioner. Which is really my point – branding often means influencing people who AREN’T currently in the market for your product, which means getting a message to people who aren’t really interested. Without intrusive mass media, that becomes a very expensive and difficult proposition, regardless of how “epic” your brand.

Those pictures and emotions then become language in the brain of the customer. And it’s the language of evangelism.

I seem to recall a television monitoring agency that got upset because they were being asked to back up their claims.

On the Web, whether or not you do intensive analytics, the possibility is always there, and easily enough built in.

I’d have to say that it sounds like one of those times of change, when you have to change with the times.

The advertising team is given an allotted amount to spend on Television ads with no goal in mind, other than to reach millions. Although I do believe the trends are turning in favor of performance marketing, hence the frustration of IAB and the millions their going to lose!

It’s only natural that the agencies are going to want to fight the upstart competitor. I find it comical, though, that they choose an argument of “They’re not as clever as we are” to combat a challenger who is kicking their Armani-clad rear ends.

Performance-based marketing is making inroads because it works for advertisers. Does that mean that agencies should just fold up their tents and fade away? No. Just as radio created a new niche for itself when television came along, agencies will eventually find their niche (assuming that they’re as clever as the claim to be).

If you want to talk about online branding and value – talk to affiliates – they are the ones who carry the can for an aweful lot of companies. All too often I see branding banners offered on affiliate network sites by companies who think that having an (e.g) DELL logo is going to encourage a click-through. They expect publishers to plaster their banner on their sites, with the publisher hoping someone will click it and buy something.

Instead marketing needs to be offer-based – something to entice a click – even harder in graphic stuff, which is why I am heavily into text content.

But lets get to the crux of your headline – Performance Based. Is a click through a measure of performance? Partly. But again from an affiliate’s perspective it is much deeper than that – the click needs to be wrapped in, as you mention about search ads, a desire by the person to at least consider buying.

My argument is that performance advertising is measured in *conversions* to sale, sign-up etc.

That’s how I earn my money and that is the only performance that matters. The rest is agancy hyperbole and navel-gazing on the subject.

web analytics allows you to track most of this and engagement marketing can also tell you how often your customer had to read the headline and how many so called unsuccessful viral videos they had to watch before their purchased something.

Can your offline media measure time wasters vs high value sales, im sorry but no!

Want a unsuccessful campaign look at blendtec and its “will it blend campaign” if thats not an example of succesful viral campaigns i will go out and sell newspapers on the street corner to help your old media clients get some exposure!

Go on try it, google “will it blend” and see the close to 45 million pages google has dedicated to that term, its not a generic term so its purely original and purely marketing!

the dotcom bust showed that companies who didnt work with performance based marketing lost their investors money and went broke!

if im not measuring my clients campaigns in some way im not doing my job, performance based is the only way that you can ensure your agency is doing something!