I’ve been reading about Project Apollo, not the Moon mission, but a new way of measuring online spend.

Another way to think about Project Apollo is that it would aggregate a “day in the life” of thousands of consumers. Marketers would have the opportunity to get a read on when and where key consumer segments receive product messages, how they process and filter that information, and the impact on the ultimate purchase decision.

Here’s an example of what Project Apollo might capture and aggregate in “a day in the life” of a health conscious, Visa- and MasterCard-toting married woman, age 41, with a 13-year-old daughter who lives a hectic life, eats out four to six times a week and places a premium on convenience. Our Mom hears a drive-time radio commercial for McDonald’s in the morning and swings by for a late lunch with her daughter the same day.

While watching television with the family that evening, a commercial for the Navigator airs, prompting a weekend visit to the Lincoln showroom by our couple the following Saturday. With Apollo, the connection from exposure to action will be clear, direct and measurable, informed by a robust collection of rich consumer profiles contributed by panel members.

Components likely will include:

1. Multi-Media Panel comprising 30,000 households, and nationally projectable for 70,000 people, providing encoded electronic media data, print readership surveys and specialty surveys measuring purchase behavior and attitudes across a variety of industries and categories.
2. ACNielsen Homescan Single-Source Panel comprising 15,000 households and 34,500 individuals within the Multi-Media Panel, designed to integrate household packaged goods purchase behavior.
3. Syndicated and Custom Online Surveys including quarterly print readership updates for magazines, daily and national newspapers. Syndicated and custom surveys will capture purchase behavior and attitudinal information for industries outside the traditional packaged goods arena including pharmaceuticals, financial services, automotive, entertainment, electronic and other industries.

The data that’s going to come out of Project Apollo will be much more of what the media world has been looking for.   Infact, I’ve noticed there is a different vocabulary between Search and Marketing; Marketing focuses on reach, frequency and retension while Search Advertising (paid and organic) focus on CTR and Conversions.  The two vocabularies don’t match up but Project Apollo will, among other things, take care of making them match up.