Brinker

Web marketers are beginning to embrace conversion rates over traffic data as the metrics of choice to measure online advertising's effectiveness.

There are two main modes of converting website visitors - the search mode and the pitch mode - writes Scott Brinker, president and CTO of Ion Interactive, in Ad Age. In search mode, the conversion rests in the hands of the user and is organic; paid keywords and SEO are used to increase the chances of a site's being selected from the user's search results, thus generating traffic. In pitch mode, the process starts with a user responding to an ad, then being funnelled through a sequences of pages, each tailored based on the respondent's previous behavior. The end result is to usually acquire the respondent's contact information.

While the initial ad begins the pitch, the subsequent screens must come together to create a seamless experience, which is key to a successful pitch - and this area is where creative agencies can really shine, Brinker writes.

Pitch shouldn't completely replace search in a conversion strategy, he says, and suggests giving the user a search-oriented "escape hatch" even when in pitch mode.