Brand lift data: Why every agency needs it

Sean Adams, CMO at Brand Metrics, shows how brand lift provides a truly holistic picture of campaign performance, and explains how to get the best from the data

As we all trawl through the annual wave of industry prediction articles, features and thought leadership pieces, it’s clear the digital advertising industry will be addressing some big themes this year. 

Key among these are accountability and effectiveness. Budgets across the industry are tight, and marketers need to prove their worth and demonstrate their value if they are to survive, let alone thrive. As technology advances, new types of data are becoming increasingly influential in offering the cold, hard evidence that a marketing department's work has achieved what it was intended to. 

Among the most illuminating varieties of data is brand lift, which can offer agencies - via their publisher partners - a holistic view of campaign performance and a greater understanding of how their advertising is performing. 

What is brand lift data?

When agencies typically appraise a campaign's success, they have access to two types of data. The first is produced on initial delivery of a campaign, and shows how effectively an ad has reached an audience. This type of data includes viewability, impressions and attention metrics. The second batch of data is more performance-related and shows if a campaign has been successful in driving results: sales numbers and click-through rates, for example. 

So, agencies have a lot of information about the delivery and performance of a campaign, but not so much on what happens in between. The outcomes data produced during this mid-funnel period is called brand lift data, and can be used to build a fully elevated, holistic picture of campaign effectiveness. This data measures brand perceptions and takes the form of metrics that include brand awareness, consideration, preference and purchase intent.

Why is outcomes data important for agencies?

Outcomes data, like brand lift, can be used to provide transformative colour and nuance to the understanding of a campaign's performance. One of the most significant benefits is also the simplest: agencies can provide evidence to their clients that the work they’re doing has real value, and warrants the budget spent. 

In general, so little of the data produced by an ad campaign is related to brand lift outcomes, and the result is that agencies often don’t know what worked and why. Outcomes data changes that, and provides a rolling process of review that allows agencies to make everything from small, considered tweaks to a campaign’s creative, to larger directional corrections, such as a change of ad format or audience targeting. 

One of brand lift data’s great benefits is the transformative effect it can have on the relationship between an agency and its client. The fresh, granular information it provides can be used by a multitude of different stakeholders across the two businesses to elevate their collaboration. 

For example, data teams can use the information in their planning tools; insights teams can employ the data to work out which platforms, formats and audiences are working; research teams can use the information to understand the impact different publishers and sites have on their clients. 

Ultimately, if an agency can help a brand understand how it is perceived by consumers, this will provide both a huge deal of performance context for a campaign, and show how audiences can be successfully engaged to boost further campaign performance. 

Practical guide: Getting the most from brand lift data

We’ve seen how brand lift data can positively impact everything from individual campaign measurement to the relationship between an agency and its clients. Now let’s take a look at a few tips and tricks that ensure you’re squeezing the absolute maximum from the data.

First of all, you should measure as many campaigns as possible for brand lift. Consistency is really key here and, because advances in technology have made collecting the data quicker, easier and cheaper than ever, there’s no reason not to measure brand lift as standard practice.

In doing so, agencies can build their own brand lift benchmarks for success and use these to shape future campaigns. Our research shows that clients who measure more campaigns get a 16% higher brand lift than average.

Brand lift data used to be measured exclusively with panels, but the latest algorithm-led tech has made this method seem outdated. Platforms such as our own have instead use a short, one-question survey, presented to consumers viewing an ad ‘in the wild’ i.e. in the publisher’s own environment This has provided a genuine alternative to the costly, time-intensive panel process (and has conveniently eliminated the need for third-party tracking in the process). Our advice? Go with a scalable brand lift solution that eschews panels.  

Finally, blend the data. Outcomes data is inherently suited to being matched with other datasets to provide added campaign insight, as well as strategic and commercial direction. For example, News UK successfully combines brand lift data (such as consideration and purchase intent) with attention data and its own first-party data to create a new, data-led planning tool that helps advertisers and agencies build a clear picture of campaign performance and optimisation.