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AMTRACK – Ad & Brand tracking

Real business is really complicated. Continuous tracking is one of the most important tools available to any marketer. Without exception, all successful consumer marketing companies track the performance of and interaction between their brand and marketing initiatives. AMC’s advertising and brand tracking system AMTRACK provides clients with an assessment of the ad campaign in its real media context. 
 
A typical campaign budget will spend ten times more on media than on creative, so it makes sense to measure both:
 
o         A great ad can still fail if the media is not well planned and bought
o         Even an excellent media plan will not yield needed results if the ad itself is weak (not attention-grabbing, has a generic message or can’t communicate its message)
 
Of course, the real world is about much more than advertising or media. The ad’s influence on the brand is an integral part of how performance is measured, but ultimately the brand will be impacted by many factors, some beyond the marketer’s control:
 
Manageable
o         Perceptions of product function, uniqueness, quality, value
o         Distribution – store penetration, quality of facings, retailer rebates
o         Price and discounts
o         Advertising, brand communications and image-focused promotions
o         Below the line activities
o         Media channel choices, spending, audience targeting
 
Out of the marketer’s direct control
o         Competitor actions in all areas of marketing
o         Media environment
o         Regulatory environment
o         Seasonality
o         Changes in consumer preference and tastes
o         Consumer usage experience
o         Consumer-generated communications (word of mouth)
 
Any of the above manageable or external issues can form the content of a tracking system, it simply depends on how many of a client’s business priorities can be accurately assessed in the amount of time available to collect information from respondents. 
 
 
Important Features of AMTRACK
 
o         Comprehensive analysis of media effectiveness
o         Ability to track and evaluate multiple media campaigns
o         Media Leakage analysis
o         AMC’s unique market impact analytical model
 
 

For most consumer goods marketers, monitoring the effect of above- or below-the-line communications is the most immediately valuable benefit of continuously tracking. Even great ads wear out after too much exposure. Well-planned and bought media soon start to level off and deliver less bang. The life of an ad campaign is always characterized by diminishing returns for continuing investment. 

Here’s a real example of how tracking can help save money. This campaign for a food product reached its peak in terms of awareness after three bursts on TV. The leveling which is seen to start in the third burst could have been acted on, the TV campaign could have been pulled or the remaining budget perhaps used to diversify the campaign into other media. If they had diversified to other media earlier, there probably would have been a second lift in recall as new viewers, those who don’t watch much TV, get exposed to the ad.

The law of diminishing returns in media

The improvement potential uncovered in the example above amounted to more than the cost of the tracker for a full year, and there are typically many such opportunities for a tracker to pay for itself. The potential savings, in media costs alone, of a continuous tracker amount to millions of Rmb per year, far outweighing the cost of the research.

Because tracking encompasses complex cause-and-effect relationships between many parts of a business and its environment, clients benefit from tracking providers knowing the context of what they are measuring. As knowledge and information accumulates, the questions and business challenges that can be answered from a tracker get deeper. A good tracker therefore needs to be collaborative: clients need to be able to share and talk about their ongoing marketing initiatives; and they can expect to benefit from the research provider’s experience in working with other companies. Tracking is not a push-button solution, it requires more involvement by clients than any other market research methodology. When handled well, tracking provides rich, deep and highly actionable insights for business decisions.  
 
AMC knows how to make tracking work. We are a fully independent research company, not affiliated with any advertising, media or marketing services providers. Our mission is to help clients build stronger brands by more wisely using their advertising and media resources.
 
 

Get more information on AMTRACK