2 Days, 1 Billion Impressions?

Trolling around AgencySpy, I came across a story about T-Mobile. It turns out that they are attempting to launch the largest online campaign ever.

To advertise the new Google Phone - G1 (featuring Android), T-Mobile is partnering with AOL's Platform A Agency to attempt to deliver 1 billion online impressions in 2 days. Considering that most standard campaigns deliver about 70-100 million impressions over 8-12 weeks, this is pretty big.

Ad Age reported that the potential cost of this buy is approximately 1.5 million US. The campaign will be featured on a number of Comscores top 100 sites and will eat up the majority of Platform A's impressions over the two days (sorry if you're another client...)

Is doing something like this worth it? If you've read this blog at all, you know that I've got major issues with the way impressions are currently measured. Sure, T-Mobile can buy a billion impressions, but what does that actually mean? The web experience is pretty good but will this buy actually drive major awareness for the phone? Will people who have not been waiting for the Google Phone to come out over the last 5 years actually take notice? Or will they just ignore another cell phone ad?

Whatever the case may be, the fact that this story is garnering so much attention shows a little of what is currently wrong with this form of measurement. It's all about the number of impressions and not about the quality.

I'm excited to see Platform A's media report after this campaign is over:

"Objective: Serve 1 Billion Impressions in 2 Days
Result: We did it and exceeded the plan by 10% for no extra cost!"

Bring on the media innovation awards...