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 andSingapore.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 a prudent approach and to spend a small percentage of

their marketing budgets online.

Across the thousands of online campaigns audited 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