Digital attribution has taken a battering in recent years for a number of reasons. On the one hand data protection is making it trickier for companies to lay down cookies that track people’s movements on the web, and on the other the internet giants are offering MTA solutions that mark their own homework.

At IMS we have a range of solutions that can give you a true and honest measure of how your digital assets are performing as both a sales channel and as a media channel, how much they drive each other, and what the true ROI of each should be.

For each spot we can see how many results there were before and after.

Our models show that different media can impact sales via different routes. We demonstrate the interactive relation-ship between online demand and sales. In doing so we show how media can impact sales directly, or via synergising with other media and thus give a true depiction of ROI.

Helping understand search patterns is a standard of all marketing departments. We can explore Google Analytics data to go beyond the basic metrics. Looking at not just the search behaviours that you can see, but also search behaviours and key terms that you may have missed, that your competitors might have seized on, and other opportunities that are missed by the market altogether.

We identify who are the top journalists writing about the issues most pertinent to your audience. By weighting various factors such as reach, social engagement, outlet influence and tonality (among other factors) we can strategically pinpoint the journalists that present the greatest opportunity for your PR & comms campaigns.

Your customers, your stakeholders, and your competitors are online. They’re searching for you, reading about you, and posting about you. We map the journey from their initial searches, to their final conversions to help you identify where and how you can drive increased funnel conversion.

Identify the voices influencing conversation trends and perception of your brand/business.

Evaluate how these influencers’ tone, messaging, and manner of communication resonates with key audiences, and creates lasting impact on your audiences’ decisions.

Evaluate how these influencers’ tone, messaging, and manner of communication resonates with key audiences, and creates lasting impact on your audiences’ decisions.

Your customers are online, whoever they are. And they’re searching for you, reading about you, and likely even talking about you. We work with you to map that digital ecosystem, identifying your relevancy within that digital ecosystem, and help you make it grow.

We identify conversation topics driving discussion among your key audiences. What are they talking about? And why are they talking about it? We look for opportunities for you to enter into the conversation, and shift your brand reputation.

An optimizer builds on a sales forecaster, quickly looping through scenarios to find optimal media plans.

These can be tailored to remove impractical scenarios; media spend thresholds and limits, flighting patterns etc.

They are typically used for one of two purposes:

How can sales be maximized under a given budget?

What is the smallest budget needed to hit a sales target?

Are your promotions working to drive incremental sales or are they cannibalising existing sales?

Which promotions are best for profitability and sales growth?

We can build models that break apart the impact of different promotions, identifying which are driving incremental revenue, and which are not.

It is a well-established fact of marketing life that expenditure (in the shape of SOV) needs to reflect desired SOM. Sev-eral authors have proposed that there are general relationships between market share and SOV (e.g. Broadbent 1989; Jones 1990; Buck 2001), and that for any given market share there is an equilibrium SOV at which that market share will be stable. Source: Marketing in the Era of Accountability, Binet and Field (2006)

If SOV is above the equilibrium level, then market share will generally rise to the new higher equilibrium level. Similarly, if SOV falls below the equilibrium level, then market share will generally fall.

The theory is expanded by exploring the speed at which brands move in a market. This gives an indication of how much a brand would need to spend to grow at a rate they desired – for example if a brand wished to grown 0.5% market share how much excess share of voice would they require?

We can pick apart the impact of different creative performances. This can be at the macro level – “How does our performance media compare to branded content and what is the optimal split between the two?”, to more time based “How does our new campaign compare to our old one?”. Understanding the ROIs, impacts and mechanisms of these different campaigns and tactics allow us to optimise the strategy and weighting of the media plan to maximise financial outcomes.

We take our models and build a sales forecaster which allows you to model different scenarios against your sales targets. This gives you much greater control over how you plan your media to maximise sales revenues.

Econometrics or MMM is a widely practiced discipline used in economics and financial markets to mathematically forecast and predict outcomes. One application is to measure the relationship between inputs such as advertising, and outputs such as sales. The methodology used evaluates media while controlling for other factors such as price, economics, distribution, and the weather. It is often used by Investor groups and CFOs to justify media investment.

This means we will measure the impact of media, (including above-the-line advertising, and digital channels), other marketing factors (e.g. price), economic factors, competitive pressures, and exogenous factors (e.g. weather) on customer acquisitions, footfall and web traffic0.

Media is no longer linear. Modelling should adapt to capture this. At IMS we seek not only to understand how much media drives sales, but also how much digital assets rely on above the line and branded media. This helps clients avoid falling into the performance media trap and dumping all their budget into branded search and affiliates at the expense of long-term growth and salience.

Econometrics or MMM is a widely practiced discipline used in economics and financial markets to mathematically forecast and predict outcomes. One application is to measure the relationship between inputs such as advertising, and outputs such as sales. The methodology used evaluates media while controlling for other factors such as price, economics, distribution, and the weather. It is often used by Investor groups and CFOs to justify media investment.

This means we will measure the impact of media, (including above-the-line advertising, and digital channels), other marketing factors (e.g. price), economic factors, competitive pressures, and exogenous factors (e.g. weather) on customer acquisitions, footfall and web traffic.

So few businesses truly understand who their audiences are. What do they read? What do they care about? Who do they turn to for advice & information? And crucially, what is your business’ role in that?

In audience analyses, we work with you to develop and audience focused strategy that communicates the relevant aspects of your brand.

Many clients want to in-house their marketing analytics programs but often find this difficult. Similarly, many agencies want to develop their own analytics teams but have no idea where to start. With our vast experience in developing bespoke teams that function as a part of the business, this is a core offering for IMS.

It’s not enough to listen – you also have to hear. This analysis essentially answers what does your audience talk about? And why are they talking about it?

We tune into what their biggest needs, attitudes and desires. In social analyses, we analyse the discussion – about your brands, but also your brand benefits. We work with you to identify the key role your business plays in their world. This information creates a powerful strategy that equips you to support your audiences, ensuring your brands & services are relevant and loved, as well as supporting behaviour changing campaigns.

We help people solve problems. Many of these solutions are unique and difficult to define. Questions we get asked will range from “This is what we want to do, can you bring any data analytics thinking to the table that will help us be more efficient”, to “We need to become data centric in our organisation” to “We have lots of data but don’t know how to use it”. There is rarely a problem we cannot help with.

What we’re willing to confess to Google often differs from what we’re willing to express on public social channels. Search analysis gives us a chance to dive into those revealing questions and queries we pose to Google, and what it means to your business.

We can also explore avenues of search, understanding how keywords directing traffic to your website differs from your audiences’ wider search activity, and how we can optimise your content to better resonate with your readers.

Often agencies have an analytics team, and they are aware that they do valuable bespoke work for their clients. But they cannot explain what they do, they cannot humanise or tell the story that sounds great to people who know nothing about data. We have a tonne of experience in this area, having previously developed products for agencies both large and small.

In the modern world, Data analytics including Econometrics and media planning go hand in hand. At IMS we help agencies with their media planning - working with them to assume it is both optimal from a sales and ROI perspective, and also ensuring that the data doesn’t dominate all decisions to the point of ruling out innovation and creativity..

Similar to productization is offering development. Here we are usually brought in to help agency clients develop a specific offering that will help them better service their clients using data. In practice this can mean anything from auditing clients’ needs and usage, identifying new data sources or tools, identifying data science streams that can automate, improve and make unique algorithms off of the existing data streams.

Know where you’re positioned in the market, as well as your competitive strengths and opportunities.

Our competitor analysis allows you to uncover your competitor’s comms strategy and learn from their initiatives. Find out what and what separates you from the pack, and how you can do it better.

Use these findings to develop a distinctive communications approach that means you stay memorable to your audience, and capitalise on opportunities your competition is missing.