New Juno Ad Tracking Program Goes Beyond the Click-Through

In an attempt to boost its value to advertisers, Juno Online Services this week unveiled a new tracking service geared to helping advertisers understand the impact of their ad campaigns on Juno Web.

by Thor Olavsrud of internetnews.com [June 5, 2001]

The service—dubbed Juno Brandmeter—does not take the traditional route of measuring click-through rates. Rather it gives advertisers the ability to analyze the levels of traffic from Juno subscribers to their Web sites before, during and after each ad campaign run on the Juno service.

"When you see an effective TV commercial or magazine ad, it rarely makes you go out and buy the advertiser's product that instant," said David Jakubowski, Juno's vice president of business development. "Rather, it makes you more likely to do so thereafter. That's the impact of branding, and it works just as effectively online as off. The Juno Brandmeter enables advertisers on Juno to measure the impact of their campaigns beyond the immediate 'impulse click-through' and to market more effectively to Juno's millions of subscribers as a result."

Premium reporting
Brandmeter reports are available to all Juno advertisers and strategic marketing partners. It will be a free value-added services for Juno's large partners—those who spend $50,000 or more. For smaller partners, Brandmeter reports will cost an additional $1,000. There are additional fees if the advertisers want to customize the service.

Because Juno is an ISP, it can track users' IP addresses to see which sites they visit. Before an advertising campaign begins, Juno tracks visits to a partner's site to establish a baseline. It then tracks visits to that site during the advertising campaign and again after the campaign ends.

In one beta test, Jakubowski said Juno "saw the inventory increase somewhere between 100 and 200 percent. After the campaign the traffic dropped, but it was still 50 to 60 percent above the baseline."

Jakubowski said that really shows advertisers the value of advertising online, especially to traditionally offline firms wondering about the effectiveness of online ads.

However, that doesn't mean Juno plans to use Brandmeter to boost its advertising rates.

"Our ad rates our currently CPM based," Jakubowski said. "We don't intend on increasing our advertising rates on this."

Even though Brandmeter tracks Juno subscribers, Jakubowski said the firm in no way compromises their privacy.

"No personally identifiable subscriber data is ever shared with an outside party," he said. "We never, as a matter of business, share personally identifiable information without the consent of the specific subscribers. This is a tool that just uses aggregate data."

More tool time coming up
Brandmeter is just the first in a series of tools Juno plans to roll out to improve the service for advertisers. The next tool—currently under trial will track the ads subscribers have seen and later survey them on the particulars of the advertisement. Jakubowski said the survey tool will give advertisers an even clearer picture of the accuracy and retention of advertising on the Web.

"This is the first step for an Internet company in moving towards tools and measurements that really address the branding effectiveness of online advertising," he said. "Juno is trying to be progressive in our attempts to meet the needs of advertisers and marketers."

—End