The marketer’s guide to measuring brand lift Understanding the purpose of brand lift studies
Tactics and insights for awareness, recall and full-funnel success
Messaging matters and brand perception is critical to how a message is received. So, it is instrumental that maeters include brand lift in their digital tool kit. In an effort to ensure every instance of campaign creative and messaging truly resonates with intended audiences, advertisers are relying on brand lift studies to determine their brand perception and learn what audiences consider most important about their brand.
Brand lift studies are also giving advertisers access to metrics such as brand awareness, ad recall and brand affinity. This is especially important as measuring campaign performance becomes more challenging as the industry increasingly prioritizes consumer privacy
amid the deprecation of traditional identifiers. Additionally, brand lift studies help marketers meet the challenge of measuring top-of-funnel impact and prove the value and success of fullfunnel campaigns.
This report from Digiday and StackAdapt is a guide for marketers who want to better understand the full-funnel impact of their campaigns and better understand their audiences’ wants and needs to inform future campaigns. With the help of expert insights, this tactical briefing highlights the challenges and benefits that come with accurate brand lift studies, providing actionable steps to improve campaign outcomes in 2022 and beyond.
Brand lift studies run within display inventory, using interactive display templates. Within these surveys, advertisers choose the question or questions they want to ask and the answers they want to provide. Tracking pixels are coded into each answer in the creative so the respondents can be differentiated according to audience segment, and the studies can be optimized similarly to other types of campaigns to get the most responses possible. The collected data allows the audience exposed to a particular campaign to be compared to a control group had not seen the ad.
Brand lift studies enable brands to collect additional qualitative data about a target audience’s perception of the brand or a campaign more specifically.
“Advertising platforms will always work with audience catalogs to provide demographic information,” said Myriam Galarneau, manager, Creative Studio at StackAdapt, “but brand lift studies provide psychographic information specific to the audience that has previously engaged with the initial campaign and that dives in much deeper to understand consumer behavior.”
Some platforms, such as those in walled gardens, offer brand lift study capabilities. Also, third-party tech vendors are available for campaigns outside those particular environments, each offering differing methodologies and specialties.
Planning a brand lift study
When deciding to run a brand lift study, that decision should be made before the campaign it will be measuring has been completed, or even set up. This timing is critical to ensure that the campaign is properly positioned to track viewers and categorize them as the exposed or control group.
“If it’s a video campaign, for example, the team can set up a quartile completion tracker — which tracks if users viewed at least 50% of a video — to create the exposed audience,” Galarneau, explained. “But if that’s not planned prior to setting up the video, it may not be possible. So it’s beneficial to think about it sooner.”
Once the decision is made to run a brand lift study, marketers then determine what to test using the study.
“If it’s a change of messaging, if they’re testing out a brand new advertising channel or having a different call to action, they should consider measuring the ad’s effectiveness with a brand lift study prior to even creating the campaign,” said Galarneau.
Next, marketers must next plan the questions and answers they need to collect data relevant to their desired outcomes. If an advertiser wants to measure ad recall, for example, a recommended question is “Do you recall seeing an ad for X brand in the last 30 days?” To measure brand favorability, questions might include “Which of the following brands come to mind when you think of X industry or specialty?” or “Which brand do you associate most with X industry or specialty?”
When deciding on the question, Galarneau suggests marketers think about what will yield the data that will help shape future campaigns. “What data will help pivot that future campaign? What are you looking to understand from your audience to adjust future messaging or adjust future target audiences?” she said.
To determine the best questions to ask, it’s important to consider the types of campaigns this data will be used to inform in the future.
While a lower-funnel campaign may be informed by questions regarding purchase intent — such as “How likely are you to purchase a product from X retailer in the next 30 days?” — an upper-funnel awareness campaign is better served by the type of brand recall or favorability questions mentioned previously.
Tactics and insights
The decision to run a brand lift study should be made prior to setting up the campaign it will seek to measure to enable proper tracking of the exposed audience.
Before running a brand lift study, marketers need to determine the specific element about which they want to test and collect data.
The questions presented in a brand lift study need to be determined based on what will enable the proper data to be collected to inform future campaigns.
Enabling measurement of brand lift
One main function of brand lift studies is to establish a benchmark of brand favorability. To get this, each study needs negative and positive responses to each question delivered to the target audience.
Negative, in this context, means an answer that the advertiser does not want the user to select. This doesn’t have to be an obviously negative choice, such as “unlikely to recommend,” or “disagree.” Rather, it can be an answer that references the brand’s biggest competitor or a characteristic with which the brand doesn’t want to be associated. Even as the study incorporates
this “negative” response, it’s also critical that brand lift studies are presented in as unbiased a way as possible. Avoiding leading language helps to ensure that the responses are based on neutral perceptions.
“It could really help your future efforts by just taking a step back and looking at it from an outside perspective,” said Galarneau. “You need to understand that these competitors or these qualities may truly be associated with the product or service that you’re advertising. You can’t get too concerned about it, which is difficult
from within the company. So it’s important to take a step back and see it from an outside perspective to get a better unbiased opinion.”
When positive and negative responses are presented to both the exposed and the control audience, measuring brand lift is possible. With data from both groups, marketers are able to determine whether those who viewed or engaged with the ad have more positive responses overall, so better brand recall or favorability, for example than those who did not.
Tactics and insights
Providing a negative response option is critical to measuring brand lift.
A negative response could be a characteristic the brand doesn’t want to be associated with or a competitor’s brand.
Avoiding leading language and maintaining an unbiased lens is important to collecting the most accurate and useful data.
Measuring brand lift is enabled by determining whether the exposed audience selected more positive responses compared to the control group.
Case study: Using a brand lift study to measure brand perception
The brand Scotts Miracle-Gro has historically dealt with the misperception that it is not an environmentally-friendly company. The brand worked with the agency Zeno Group to change that assumption.
Zeno Group worked with StackAdapt to create an upper-funnel campaign aimed at driving user awareness of the brand and impacting its perception. The campaign, which leveraged video and CTV channels, centered the messaging “GroMoreGood” to convey the brand’s environmental consciousness.
A brand lift study was also planned in order to accurately measure the impact of the campaign and this messaging. Questions in the study focused on brand recall, with
one question asking which brand uses the GroMoreGood messaging. It also touched on brand perception, with questions asking if the brand is a good, trustworthy company and whether it provides products that work safely with the environment.
The results of the study confirmed that the campaign significantly impacted the brand’s perception in a positive way. While 34% of the control group agreed that Scotts Miracle-Gro is a good, trustworthy company, 59.6% of the exposed group felt this way — a 25.6 point increase. Similarly, while 33% of the control group agreed that the brand’s products work safely with the environment, 47.4% of the exposed group agreed, indicating that the campaign was successfully working to change brand perceptions.
Improving brand lift accuracy and efficiency: The role of partnerships
Ideally, brand lift studies aren’t a one-time tactic.
“Perceptions of a brand can change over time based on trends and news, Using solutions to understand them should almost be like a cycle that’s put in place,” said Galarneau. “The data you might have collected a year or two ago may no longer be relevant.”
Working with a tech partner enables brands to access the most relevant and insightful data to keep pace with the changes in order to create retention and repeat clients.
Additionally, brand lift studies are just one tool within a larger brand lift solution strategy.
“Tech partners should essentially explore similar products to brand lift studies that can help shape future and repeat business for a brand,” said Galarneau. “This could include a brand lift study or an interview or something like an email survey. These can all fall under brand lift solutions or even sales lift solutions.”
Selecting a partner to work with involves evaluating the capabilities and specialties each offers. Beyond the specifics though, Galarneau suggests that the best
partners are those that are able to offer ongoing support, even in light of changing contexts.
“An audience’s perception of a brand is not set in stone. Having a tech partner that works with the advertiser as the industry evolves is integral to a brand’s business strategy,” she explained. “There’s always going to be new tech solutions out there and there’s always going to be new perceptions of different brands. Having a tech partner that works with these advertisers on an ongoing basis as these trends evolve is part of the secret sauce.”
About StackAdapt
StackAdapt is a self-serve programmatic advertising platform used by the most exceptional digital marketers. This state-of-theart platform is where some of the most progressive work in machine learning meets cutting-edge user experience. Ad buyers plan, execute and manage data-driven digital advertising campaigns across all devices, inventory and publisher partners.