When discussing tactics with clients in situations like these, whose mileage matters? By that, I mean that the approach should begin by asking the question, "Which measurement matters to the brand?" quickly followed by, "What can we actually measure?" Too often, marketers accept a set of measurements as the only ones that matter either because those are what have traditionally been used or because the medium most easily produces them. Relatively few marketers take the additional step of wading through the data to find the right measurements.
For the manufacturer above, the key measurement may not be how many people clicked through to the website, but how many of them then clicked a link on the website to find a retailer and what those clicks were worth in terms of typical purchase amounts. The retailer above may wish to correlate the increase in sales of the items featured in the search campaign to search activity.
