How to Compare Advertising Across Different Types of Media

What is more valuable: 10,000 individuals exposed to an ad three times, 100 clicks on an ad or 5 acquisitions? How do you reflect the value of these different metrics of advertising and compare them with each other?

Evaluating Media by CPM (and explain what CPM is)

Comparing media proposals by CPM or Cost Per Thousand is one way to show a side by side comparison.  With this method you divide the gross impressions of your proposal by the cost total price to the thousands place.  This provides a quick way of comparing campaign elements across different media platforms like TV, Radio, Publications, Digital Marketing and Outdoor.

The challenge with focusing on impression-based metrics is that they don’t account for the qualitative aspect of the campaign. Is this ad a billboard, a TV commercial or some form of interactive digital? How much tracking information do you get out of that interaction? Each one of these elements present a different experience to the audience and depending on your product or service a different value to the advertising proposal in front of you.

Evaluating by Geography

Because we can only reach up to 100% of a specific population, we cannot simply take a 60% reach from a TV schedule, a 40% reach from a radio schedule and a 35% reach from a digital order and add them all together.  

However, by filtering this data through Media Link Software’s® cross-media platform, we are now able to better evaluate all of the components in a campaign and demonstrate to other people within your company what you are getting for the advertising campaign you’ve purchased in a single report.  With this type of report, you are able to show relative reach and frequency metrics within your campaign even when your campaign includes different platforms like outdoor, radio or digital advertising. These metrics are available within each individual media type automatically without having to do a single manual calculation.