All the data in the world can’t tell you if an ad campaign is responsible for increased sales. The success or failure of any sales effort involves so many factors. It would be impossible to credit or blame an advertising campaign on the data collected. In the fast-paced world of Internet marketing, it is possible to get far more analytic data than we once had to track the results of any online campaign effort. And clients and agencies alike seem to be relying more and more on the numbers and less and less on whether or not it is a good ad. Just because we have more data doesn’t mean we know any more than we did ten years ago. I once heard a creative director at a very large advertising agency tell a very large client that advertising doesn’t make people go out and buy products. The client was dismayed and asked why he was advertising with the agency then. He replied, “The only thing you can hope for is that someone will like you a little more because you just made them laugh or cry.” That’s it! I tend to agree. Any client who thinks a piece of communication is going to get people to remove their rotund arse from a warm comfortable seat and head over to a store with cash in hand is fooling themselves. So why do we have a confluence of analytic tools and measuring methods that are all tethered to sales results? In a recent Adage article, Hernan Lopez, president of Fox Networks and chief operating officer of Fox International Channels said, “the most important factor behind successful TV campaigns was the quality of the creative” .  You go Hernan! He goes on to say that “the industry’s obsession with click-through rates, despite evidence of their small correlation with total sales, results in messages that are rarely entertaining or amusing and are overly reliant on verbal hard sell.” Mr. Lopez believes the answer relies on a creative revolution. As a former creative, I couldn’t agree more. But don’t expect me to move my arse any time soon.

I’m all for capturing data and analyzing it six ways till Sunday. But just because you have the tools doesn’t mean you should use them at the expense of everything else. I remember getting my first lesson on the golden ratio in design school. For the next three years after that, every project I created was guided by the golden ratio so much so that you could almost see Pythagoras himself peering back at you. My work started looking as stiff as the square root of five. Eventually, I laid off the math formulas a bit and allowed myself to think and create without a T-square and calculator at my side and, what do you know; my work began to take on a fresh new life. Till this day I carry around the knowledge of the golden ratio in the back of my mind when designing, but by no means do I rely exclusively on it to guide my process. But is this what’s happening in the online world? Are we relying too heavily on the fact that we can track clicks and behaviors online to guide us in crafting marketing messaging? In a recent Mediapost article I read that some companies who are experts in the neuro-marketing research field actually use CAT scans to collect data on reactions to ad campaigns. Yes, the same CAT scans you find in hospitals and neurology labs. Do we really need input on eye-tracking or facial recognition technology just to make an ad? Or how about a blog? By the way, if you are reading this far, I’m watching your every move.

There’s a lot of buzz about Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing. But is it that much different than Yahoo and Google? After only a short time, experts are beginning to see how Bing may affect analytics for companies tracking how their customers find them on the internet. In a recent Mediapost article Brian Cummins, product manager for search marketing at Coremetrics said, “preliminary data suggests that bounce rates on Web sites have declined from people originating on Bing.” This may be attributed to the way in which Bing serves up search queries. When you do a search on Bing, you don’t just get a list of websites. Bing is designed to serve up various kinds of content along with listings to help the user find what they are looking for more quickly. This means that the journey that once took three or four steps to get you where you want to go is now taking only one, only now the in-between steps aren’t being tracked. So this also means that the keywords that drive traffic from Bing are going to be different than the keywords driving traffic from Google. For now, it looks like Bing is bringing something new to the table. How significant these features will be, only time will tell.