The ROI Wars Continue

Seth Godin's blog points out an interesting change taking place over at Nielsen. They've announced they will begin tracking viewership of commercials. For some time I've wondered why so many companies want a clear and direct link to ROI when creating online marketing campaigns, when they seem to be willing to only track sales lift when dealing with television campaigns.

Maybe I've been mistaken. It looks to me as if the same pressure internet marketers have been dealing with will now effect those creating spots as well. I can't say I'm surprised, but marketers are going to have to start making measurement planning a key element of their strategic process.

Of course to do that, marketers will have to be crystal clear about their objective. You can't measure success if you haven't defined what success means.