“Relationship” Cookies

The secret to online marketing is at the cookie level.  Every moment is 1:1 between the brand and the consumer.  For each individual impression we can measure the resulting actions (or inactions).

So we, the media buyers and digital marketers out there, buy cheap impressions – the cheaper the better as long as they “perform.”  We’re smarter with our dollars.  We have data and algorithms that tell us where our marketing budgets are working most effectively.  We’re 100% accountable with our media down to the cookie level.

But what about the consumer?  Have you ever stopped to think about the net impact to the consumer of all your online programs combined?

Direct response media is still direct response media.  A banner ad might not be as intrusive as a piece of direct mail, but there’s a certain element of pushiness in campaigns that routinely and overtly scream at customers to buy.  It seems even more distasteful when all those ads appear at page bottom of anonymous content.

There is a net, cumulative influence on brand perception.  At the end of the day, consumers are either going to feel better about your brand because of their online interactions or not.

The takeaway is simple: respect the consumer.  Give them useful content.  It’s OK to run smart DR campaigns, but balance that against rich, interactive experiences.  Brand studies routinely confirm the superiority of rich media over standard Flash and image ads when it comes to impacting brand perceptions.  Why do you think it’s projected that rich media will account for 50% of online impressions by 2015?

It’s time we start thinking about relationship cookies.  Every time we slap an online cookie with an impression, there’s an immeasurable (or at least expensive to measure!) impact on the overall relationship, or the “relationship cookie.”

The only difference is you can never clear your relationship cookies.