What's social media good for? Marketers see it as a new way to engage with consumers. Economist-turned-advertising executive Jason Harper sees an additional function: as a real-time laboratory for measuring how multi-million dollar ad campaigns are succeeding or failing to drive product sales.
Armed with a masters degree in applied economics, Harper was hired three years ago, at age 30, by the Detroit office of Organic Inc., a leading digital ad agency, to crunch the ad campaign data of car companies -- with the goal of seeing whether digital marketing efforts were helping move vehicles off lots. Assigned to Chrysler's Jeep and Dodge Ram truck accounts, Harper had to figure out how to correlate whether TV commercials were driving website visits, Twitter conversation and Facebook brand page activity. He also had to calculate whether all that online activity was leading to an increase in test drives at dealerships. "The biggest question with social media is 'what's the value?'" he says.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Technology Review: A New Model for Predicting Social Media Impact
Author: Evan I. Schwartz
