Headley works with ISN's agency, i-Traffic, and uses AdKnowledge's Advisor service to optimize online media buys based on the cost per new member acquired. AdKnowledge facilitates the buying and serving of banners on sites across the Web. Ad impact can be estimated even if surfers don't click on a banner. They can type in the URL later and still be tracked. Because Advisor knows how many ads are served and how much each ad costs, advertisers can get a real-time report about how much each site costs per desired event.
Clients can shift money away from nonproducing sites without waiting for monthly reports.
These services are customizable, and e-commerce vendors can track ROI based on any event on their sites. Eddie Bauer, for instance, uses proprietary technology from its interactive agency, Avenue A, to optimize ad placement based on sales per customer. Using Avenue A we could hone an ad campaign so by its end, we were able to do better than break even. For Benjamin Nissanoff, head of advertising at online brokerage Datek, return on investment in terms of sales is not quite good enough. He's aiming to optimize his Web-ad ROI in terms of the lifetime value of customers acquired.