Sneak Peek: "Measuring the Value of Word of Mouth"

As I mentioned in my last post I'll be speaking at the Advertising Research Foundation's Audience Measurement 3.0 conference this week. I'm on a great panel titled "Putting a Ruler on Buzz" and I'll be speaking with folks from Nielsen Online and The Keller Fay Group.

My portion is "Measuring the Value of Word of Mouth" and here's the promo blurb:

We’re told that word of mouth works, but what’s the value of a conversation to a brand? This research shows how to measure spread and impact in order to determine the true value of a conversation.

In case you want a sneak peek, or can't attend the conference, below is a copy of the paper I'll be presenting. Here's the executive summary:

This paper presents a Conversation Value™ model that quantifies the bottom-line value of each conversation about a company’s product or service that can be attributed to a particular marketing or media initiative. We also present the G2X Conversation Tracking Methodology, which is used to collect data for two key inputs into the Conversation Value™ model: generational relay rates (used to compute the overall conversational reach of the initiative) and purchase rates (the percentage of people who report purchasing the product at each generation). We show how to compute the conversation value for a CPG product and then discuss four applications of how the model can be used in the media and marketing industries. In an extended appendix we provide technical details about how to calculate generational and purchase rates using a multiple imputation procedure.

Download "Measuring the Value of Word of Mouth" Conference Paper