In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, getting the maximum return on every media dollar spent is becoming a big challenge for advertisers. This is why Frank Harrison, strategic resources director of ZenithOptimedia Worldwide, a Publicis Groupe-owned media agency believes measurement tools are going to become more and more relevant. In 2004, Harrison created Touchpoints ROI Tracker, which has now become ZenithOptimedia's main tool to measure marketing return on investment (ROI) across all consumer contact points.

The agency has already introduced Touchpoints as well as Ninah, an econometric modeling unit, in India. Soon, it will be rolling out Performix, a research arm that that gives measurement data in the digital space, as well as Ecco, a method for measuring and reporting the performance of campaigns across all platforms.

The UK-based Harrison, who confesses that the last time he came to Delhi was in 1969 when his diplomat father was posted in Pakistan (of course, he has been to other Indian cities since), talks to BrandLine on the growing importance of ROI measures, and how these can usher in media efficiency.

How relevant are these tools?

Now more than ever there is greater need for marketing accountability. ROI has always been a big focus of Zenith Optimedia.

The ROI on an ad campaign need not necessarily be in terms of sales. It depends on the advertising objective. The role of advertising could be to increase awareness – say, in the case of a car launch. So, we would then measure awareness about the new car. It could also be a measurement of brand equity. It could also be sales. This is not just a pitching point to clients, but we feel measuring ROI could be a deciding factor in inter-media allocations.

Any case studies?

One example is the work we did for Nestle in Russia. Nestle was launching a product in the infant formula category and firming up its advertising strategy. We did a survey of mothers to find out what were the key influencers when they bought baby food. A surprise to us as well as Nestle was that doctor recommendation was the highest influencer.

Nestle was planning a big TV campaign; instead it put the money in increasing the sales force reaching out to doctors.

Who are the early adopters of such research, MNCs or smaller family-owned firms?

The companies most actively using it are the MNCs such as the P&Gs, Nestles and L'Oreals – they have heavily invested in these models. They have larger brand budgets and are more able to afford research and analysis. When we launched Touchpoints ROI tracker in 2004, we anticipated four times fewer projects than we actually achieved. Since then we have done 507 research projects in 45 countries. We have even done projects in Ecuador and Latvia. We were really surprised by the uptake. An average of 1,000 consumers per project were interviewed and the total cost of these projects was $25 million.

Who pays for this research? Is price a barrier for small companies?

Ninety per cent of these are paid for by clients but sometimes we do too. For instance, we have just completed an enormous Touchpoints study in China for which we have paid. China is an exciting market because we still find first-generation exposure to brands at all age levels. We interviewed 17,000 people in different tier cities and did research across 10 categories.

The insights gained – because China, like India, has very different marketing mix in lower tier cities – were phenomenal. One example of the finding we got from this research is the type of celebrity endorsement that works in Tier 1 and 3 cities. It is very different. Touchpoints ROI is actually affordable to any size company – in Ecuador and Latvia, ad budgets are extremely small but we have done research there too.

So, what are the trends coming out of all your Touchpoints research?

We now have a global database about paid, owned and earned media. Our research suggests that the share of brand experience on paid contact is dropping globally while owned and earned is growing. But paid has influence on earned, which has influence on owned. So there is a knock-on effect.

Paid media refers to, say, TV ads or Internet Search Display. Examples of owned media could be a company's own Web site. And earned media examples are blogs, social networks. The shift is because of the growing influence of Internet.

So how much is the shift?

The latest global figures are that 15 per cent of the advertising is going to Internet.

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