The key to impactful advertising — meaningful measurement
“What’s your hypothesis?” This question is crucial to driving value in paid media, but it is not asked often enough. No matter what your hypothesis, it’s integral to think about what you’re trying to achieve from your media and how you’ll determine success throughout the lifecycle of a campaign. Instead of only addressing measurement at the end of a campaign, we at Adobe Advertising believe that measurement should be constantly evolving and considered throughout the full lifecycle of a campaign. In addition to our in-platform tools and integration with Adobe Analytics, Adobe Advertising customers can leverage bespoke, customized measurement solutions via the Advanced Measurement and Strategy team.
Adobe Advertising’s Advanced Measurement & Strategy (AMS) is a team of consultants and researchers dedicated to supporting advertisers’ measurement needs. The AMS team helps customers build and deploy sophisticated measurement frameworks, making it easy for brands to connect their media decisions to key metrics that drive their business. Through this hands-on support, advertisers can not only validate the efficacy of their media strategies but also iterate on these strategies to improve campaign effectiveness in real time.
Awareness and branding
AMS offers a suite of upper funnel measurement solutions to contextualize the success of a media campaign. Our proprietary Household Reach & Frequency and People-Based Reach reports show the total reach and overlap of a cross-channel campaign on the household and person levels, respectively. Additionally, in partnership with Samba TV, our X-Screen+ solution measures the impact of reaching audiences on CTV as compared to linear TV. Let’s dive into an example of how these awareness metrics can support your business goals.
Historically a traditional linear TV advertiser, an online real estate brand was looking to expand its reach into CTV but wasn’t sure how or if the audiences would differ between the two formats. Using X-Screen+, the online real estate brand found only 3% overlap in reach between their linear TV audience and CTV audiences. In fact, 70% of users reached on CTV were not exposed to ads on linear, showcasing the value of CTV to reach net-new audiences. This learning helped redefine the brand’s media mix strategy and open them up to an entirely new audience on CTV.
Ultimately, upper funnel metrics are crucial to success because they provide insight into your audience and inventory – the building blocks of a strong media strategy.
Consideration and intent
If upper funnel metrics lay the foundation of a measurement strategy, mid-funnel metrics test the strength of that foundation. Consideration and intent require consumer action for the first time, so this is really the chance to see whether your messaging has the desired effect. AMS can measure this success with Panel-Based Surveys powered by Dynata, Transaction Insights powered by Commerce Signals, a TransUnion company, and Foot Traffic Measurement powered by Cuebiq. Let’s highlight an example of using offline foot traffic measurement to showcase digital campaign success.
An auto brand was looking to grow share of voice as it expanded into new markets and wanted to maximize the impact of its media efforts on driving in-store visits. With the AMS foot traffic measurement solution, the brand was able to quantify the incremental visits driven by media exposure and identify audiences and markets that were most receptive to its advertising efforts. These visit metrics empowered the brand to make in-flight optimizations like shifting spend to more effective audiences and inventory sources that drove down its cost per visit and increased its uplift rate over the course of the campaign.
Ultimately, mid-funnel tactics highlight how consumers take their first action. It’s the place to pressure-test your assumptions and see if consumers not only remember your brand or messaging, but if your media efforts drive them to make an active decision to learn more.
Purchase and conversion
Keeping with the building metaphor, the bottom of the funnel is when you re-evaluate how to best leverage media efforts to maximize outcomes. It’s critical to note that the bottom of the funnel is not the end of measurement, but instead a pivotal point to decide how to move forward.
With AMS, Adobe Advertising offers Household Reach & Frequency and People-Based Reach conversion reporting, as well as Transaction Measurement (powered by Commerce Signals). These measurement solutions share insights into incremental revenue gains and ultimately show which audiences, messaging, and inventory make the most sense for your brand’s bottom line. Let’s take a look at how a DSP client measured success via cross-channel conversion reporting.
A technology brand initially introduced audio into its cross-channel media campaign to increase its reach but quickly realized the value of audio to drive users to take action. As the brand increased its audio investment to capitalize on this performance, the brand leveraged people-based reach and conversion measurement to identify the top conversion-driving publishers. These reporting insights enabled the brand to make data-driven in-flight optimizations to maximize delivery on these publishers and track improvements in CPA over the course of the campaign. People-based reporting proved instrumental to the brand’s inventory expansion and refinement efforts.
Lower funnel metrics build upon the success of awareness and consideration metrics. Each stage should be reviewed and optimized in the context of the other as much as possible.
Key takeaways
Measurement is a pivotal part of a paid media strategy, and we believe it should be an integral part of the entire campaign process, from planning to wrap-up and planning again. Additionally, each stage of the funnel builds upon each other and should be measured as such. The Adobe Advertising Advanced Measurement & Strategy team offers a suite of out-of-the-box and bespoke solutions across all stages of the funnel, ensuring our customers’ media campaigns achieve multiple success metrics through the lifecycle of a campaign.
Click here to learn more about Adobe Advertising. If you’re looking for custom solutions to answer your hypotheses, reach out to your Adobe representative to set up a working session with our AMS team today.
Emma Jackel is a senior manager of strategic consulting for Adobe Advertising with over 10 years of experience in the advertising world. Prior to leading the strategic consulting team, Emma held roles in Adobe’s Advanced Measurement practice, helping brands develop and deliver winning media strategies. Emma has a deep understanding of the programmatic landscape, digital media measurement, and the value of tying online ads to offline actions. She has a passion for data-driven storytelling and providing powerful insights to our clients throughout the customer journey.