Week #3 Brand Impressions and Analytics

For Week #3, Professor Kelsey shared with us a seven page essay regarding his ad campaign on SoundCloud, discussing in detail the growth his campaign has seen from beginning on August, 22nd, to September 11th, including clicks, impressions, and total plays. Furthermore, the importance of these aforementioned elements was elaborated upon in great detail, hitting home the cruciality of these intricacies. In my opinion, the most important thing the essay illustrated was the towards the very end, when Professor Kelsey wrote, "SEO can be thought of like real estate-increasing the value of online property." As described in the essay, Professor Kelsey's ad garnered 140K impressions, 700 clicks, and 270ish total plays. 

For me, this is when things really become fascinating. As previously discussed, quality of content is the key to a successful ad campaign. That being said, the essay further makes the claim that when the quality of the advertisement makes a good enough impression, the best possible outcome would be, as described the 'holy grail' of advertising: word of mouth. It's free, it's effective, and the sky's the limit when considering how far the word can spread. An advertisement should be seen as an extension of the good/service/idea, etc., and therefore should match the quality of the good/service that is trying to e sold. If the quality is there, and the ad represents the god/service in a similar and complimentary fashion when compared to the product, then that will increase the chances of the aforementioned preferred domino effect occurring. 

Achieving said domino effect will prove even more crucial and helpful in contemporary times, with elements such as 'conversion code', as introduced by Google, making a good impression and a good brand image even more important. If an ad is popular enough, transactions and sometimes even keywords can be traced back to an ad, helping the advertiser(s) better understand what worked about their ad.