Despite today's buzz on all things...

...digital, despite global interactive advertising being forecast to reach US$147

billion by 2012 from the current US$45 billion*, and despite three online media

platforms making it to the Fournaise 2007 top 10 marketing Effectiveness Ranking

(or EFFER), in the day-to-day reality of generating incremental customer demand

for their products or services, marketers seem to have a major trust issue when

it comes to the overall reliability and credibility of online advertising.In such a skeptical context, it is

 not surprising that 40% of marketers around the world did not run online campaigns , a figure

reaching 65% in high GDP growth markets such as Greater China, India and

Singapore.The top five concerns marketers have about online advertising

are:

They don't know if they actually get what theypay for

They don't know if they can trust the visitor and/or traffic profile online media owners and publishers

 claim their sites have delivered.

They have the feeling there is a lot of click fraud

They don't know if their ads appear in the sites and/or sites' sections where they should appear

They don't trust the traffic and click-through reports digital media owners give them. This could

explain why marketers globally are planning to still take aprudent approach and to spend a small

percentage of their marketing budgets online Across the thousands of online campaigns audiet for our

clients worldwide through we have been observing consistently poor results: Click Through Rates

(CTRs) have fallen as low as 0.15% (sometimes even lower), Conversion Rates (CVRs) are barely

reaching the 3% average, and as far as Returns on Marketing Investment (ROMIs)

are concerned, our clients are most of the time flirting with the sub-30%

numbers," said Jerome Fontaine, CEO and Chief Tracker of The Fournaise Marketing

Group."One of the main reasons for such poor results is that for more

than 70% of the online campaigns we audit track across all types of online

media platforms (including display ads, emails, paid search, referrals, rich media

and sponsorships), our clients did not get what they paid for: one million

impressions purchased often ended up with 800,000 impressions served; an email

blast to a third party 10,000-record database was more often than not sent to a

7,000-active-email base. The bottom line: the discrepancy between what is

claimed and/or purchased and what is actually delivered is beginning to cast a

shadow on the long-term credibility of the industry. Online media have now the

immense challenge of winning the trust and confidence of marketers and must be

prepared to be audited and be accountable for the results they deliver,"

Fontaine continued