Web 2.0 continues to play an increasingly important role in online business today as consumers look for a new and more engaging online experience and increased flexibility in how they interact with businesses online. In the business brief Measuring Web 2.0 with WebTrends Marketing Lab, Part 1: RIA and RSS Up Close, we demonstrated how to measure Web 2.0 technologies like Rich Internet Applications (RIA)—including AJAX and Flash—to improve the user experience. We also showed that measuring the effectiveness of Real Simple Syndication (RSS) can ensure that you successfully extend the reach of your web content.

Our discussion of Web 2.0 wouldn’t be complete without addressing broadcast media, which is a market that’s emerging as an increasingly important content distribution channel. As an example, a recent eMarketer survey showed that more than one-third of the total US population viewed video at least monthly during 2006, and in three years, more than half of all Americans will be part of the online video audience. In this guide, we’ll examine the challenges marketers face when leveraging broadcast media technologies such as online video and mobile media to drive customer engagement and build brand loyalty. We’ll also focus on best practices for measuring and optimizing these technologies.

Business Challenges
Consumers have taken control over their online experience. It’s the consumer who dictates when, where and how they engage with your company. Marketing WebTrends departments are responding to this shift by investing more in Web 2.0 technologies to provide more choices and more media channels.

This shift in the way media and content is consumed presents new opportunities for marketers. However, it presents new challenges as well, especially when it comes to effectively reaching their customers, establishing relationships, acquiring new prospects, and achieving positive ROI. These challenges can be classified into three categories:
1. What is the ROI? As marketers invest more resources into broadcast media technologies, determining the ROI of a campaign can be difficult without a proven process for collecting data, an accurate reporting framework and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the impact their investments have on improving the visitor experience and increasing loyalty.
2. How can you build customer relationships? You can build profitable relationships with your visitors if you develop content in the formats they want most. You can also increase their likelihood to return to your site by carefully measuring visitor interaction with broadcast media, determining their preferences, and customizing their online experience.
3. What are customers consuming across channels? Because Web 2.0 technologies like broadcast media are only part of the visitor engagement, it’s crucial to understand how visitors consume content via these channels as well as other interaction channels to create a complete picture of your visitors.

In addition to these challenges, it’s also true that many Web 2.0 technologies are relatively new, and few have established best practices, reporting or data collection standards. That’s why marketers look to companies like WebTrends to help them develop best practices for optimizing broadcast media for their business.

Download pdf Measuring web 2.0 Technologies with webTrends Marketing lab