We all can agree that advertising is not an exact science but measuring advertising campaign success can be. While you might not be able to determine the exact results from your campaign dollars spent, there are methods to help us measure if the advertising is hitting the mark.
Goals and objectives should be included in any media plan. These goals are usually based on a measurable metric that it used to measure campaign success and includes a specific time or period. The most common goals are:
- Impressions
- CTR or Click Through Rate
- Time Based such as Time Spent Viewing
- Total Views
- Conversions or Return on Investment
- Increase Sales and/or Leads
- Store and/or Website Traffic
- Coupon Redemption
- Phone Inquiries
- Awareness Increases of Your Product and/or Services
In this blog we will go over a few of these ad campaign measurement methods and hopefully provide an overall view of metrics for performance of your successful use of marketing resources.
What are Impressions and How are they Measured?
The total number of impressions equates to the total number of times your ad has been served. This doesn’t show the number of individuals that have seen your ad, though, as it may be shown to the same user more than once. Many digital campaigns are purchased on a total number of impressions, but we all know that if you are not reaching the right audience who is most likely to be interested in your products or services, the higher the impression count will not necessarily correlate to greater results of your marketing campaign. We believe delivering quality versus quantity in most cases will generate higher return on investment (ROI).
Using Click Through Rates to Measure Success
Click through rate, or CTR, is exactly as it sounds. It measures the number of users which click on your online display ad, whether that takes the form of a native advertisement, banner display ad or a video. We like to use CTR (click through rates) to measure the effectiveness of different platforms as well as creative strategies. If your goal is to drive the customer to your website, then this measurement will be a key analytic to understand your advertising campaign effectiveness in achieving that goal. While you would think that the higher the CTR that you would also see a higher conversion rate for the campaign, nothing is ever that easy in the complicated world of display advertising. Comscore is an American media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to companies and organizations, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. The company found that there’s almost no link between CTR and conversion. Surprising, but the wide-ranging study covered over 250 million impressions over nine months, spread across eighteen advertisers, so the results are reliable. In this study, click throughs had a lower correlation with overall conversion than either viewable or gross impressions.
There are several potential reasons for this, but the big one is that a very small percentage of people click on display ads. Whether native or banner, the proportion of those who click through is tiny compared to the number of people who see the ad. This doesn’t mean the ads aren’t effective. The target audience may see your banner, and be drawn in by it, but then make their own way to your website later. Therefore, you need to monitor view-throughs too, which consider the users which have seen your ad who then visit your website within a certain time frame of your choosing.
When you look at this in conjunction with the CTR, you should get a much clearer picture of how your ad is performing, and what effect it’s having on your conversion
Conversion and Return on Investment Goals
At Copp Media we believe that for most advertisers, this is going to be the most important metric of all. After all, if you’re investing money in advertising, the sole purpose is to make more than you invest. Even with this relatively straightforward method of measuring success, there are still a few items that you might keep in mind. Determining what tool will be most beneficial will help to track which measurement is most critical to the success of your ad campaign will ensure that the strategy chosen will deliver the greatest return on investment. You may just be measuring direct conversions from the display ad itself. This essentially means the number of people who click on the ad and convert into customers/subscribers/do whatever you’re asking from that customer. You might also look for form fills, driving customers deeper into the sales funnel. Some of the conversion goals will be reliant on the sales cycle of a product and/or service.
Optimizing Campaigns for Success
Which measurement goals are best for your marketing campaigns? The answer will vary depending on the organization. For example, a car dealership might have goals based on impressions of a specific demographic for television while an ecommerce site that is targeting a behaviors and interest marketing strategies might use conversions as their goal.
No matter what the goals are within your marketing plan, the best way of achieving success to continue optimizing the media buys and tactics based on the data and analytics during the campaign. Your digital campaign should be optimized so that you see the greatest success and best return on your investment.
If you are interested in talking about performance metrics and how they would work best for your company and advertising campaigns, feel free to give us a call at Copp Media, we would love to chat.
