I have to admit that I'm a little bit jealous of marketing firms that get "Branding" assignments. In these engagements, the goal is to drive a lot of impressions within the target audience, but the programs are notoriously difficult to measure, so it's very hard to hold the agency that developed the program accountable for the results. Since we live and die on results every day, that has a certain appeal. It's a little like how a sales rep with a quota longs for a "staff job".
Anyway, one of our B2C clients wanted to do a campaign on MySpace. We do a lot of Google Adwords lead generation for this client, and they wanted to test MySpace to see if it would be productive for them. MySpace quoted $25,000 for a entry level campaign. While this is not a lot for a branding banner ad program, our client didn't want to risk this large an amount without testing it first.
Instead of going to MySpace directly, we used Google site targeting to drive impressions on MySpace using their existing Adwords program. In one month, we were able to drive 6,908,458 impressions at a cost of $104. What would they have paid for 7 million impressions in any other media? A lot! The program also drove about 276 clicks, but no leads so far. What's the value? If you're solely focused on leads, then the value is $0. If you value branding, the its massive. What's your take?