Lagging Metrics, Leading Insights: Using Brand Lift Studies to Optimize Social Campaign Performance and Strategy 

This POV was edited using WPP’s AI tool, Imagine 

When creating campaigns, our goal is always to craft the most impactful messaging and creatives for our brand, but how can we truly gauge the success of these efforts? While benchmarking and traditional metrics found in ads managers are essential, another impactful method is to directly engage with those consumers who are interacting with your ads. Brand lift studies offer a valuable way to measure the impact of your campaigns, and although some advertisers have been hesitant to use these studies for various reasons (which we will discuss later), they are becoming increasingly prevalent on social platforms. In fact, the argument can be made that they are now crucial to assessing social effectiveness and ROI for your brand and can be extraordinarily helpful when launching new channels, creatives, major campaigns, and testing script lift.  

So what exactly are brand lift studies, and what can they measure with the many new options available today? A traditional brand lift study is essentially a survey conducted within a social platform. It targets two groups of consumers: those who have been exposed to your advertising on particular social platforms and those who have not (the control group). These study participants are asked specific questions about ad recall, affinity, awareness, purchase intent, or likelihood to recommend depending on which questions you choose and your brand goals. By comparing the responses of the control and exposed groups, marketers can then determine whether social advertising has successfully influenced these key metrics. 

In addition to these traditional brand lift studies, social platforms are now providing a range of study options to address the various questions advertisers may have. These studies can offer valuable insights into the perception of campaigns across different geographical areas, impact on conversions, and, specifically for the pharmaceutical industry, influence on written prescriptions.  

• Conversion Lift Studies: These studies are used to measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns in driving conversions such as sign ups using the behavior of a control and exposed group to measure how ad campaigns impacted those conversions.  

• Geo Lift Studies: Using many different designs, these studies all have the same goal of testing the effect of marketing campaigns on specific geographically defined areas. These tests are helpful in understanding incremental impact without people-level data (or PII). 

• 3^rd Party (3P) Lift Studies: In its simplest terms, these studies use 3^rd party partners to provide data (i.e. Rx data) and then compare this data with results from traditional test/control studies on platform, giving a fuller picture of ROI and how campaigns are influencing script lift. A note that many of these 3P studies are beta opportunities and do require a specific set of qualifications to take part, but show a very interesting move within the lift study space.  

Each social platform has their own unique set of offerings and regularly introduce new ones, indicating that there is a growing demand for lagging measurement to help brands understand performance. The availability of pharma specific offerings further shows the need within our industry as well.  

Despite such a robust set of offerings and the plethora of ways to help optimize campaign performance and impact strategy, it can be a surprise that there has been some hesitancy in the past to conduct these studies. However, with the emergence of new offerings, it can be easy to address these hesitancies:  

• Hesitancy #1; Cost: One of the more common past hesitancies was around the cost needed to conduct a study.  

• Solution: While some studies do require substantial ad spend or incur additional costs, many platforms are moving towards self-service brand lift tools which come at no additional cost to our clients, allowing these studies to be more accessible regardless of ad spend. Additionally, depending on your brand’s current ad spend, some studies could be offered as added value.  

• Hesitancy # 2; Time: A second hesitation associated with lift studies is the time required for creatives to stay on platform without campaign changes, or the dark time needed before launching. 

• Solution: Although this is a very real consideration for brands, it is important to think about how the benefits outweigh the hesitancies. Along with this, studies do not need to be conducted on every creative, nor would we recommend doing so. Focusing studies on large campaigns, new initiatives, or influencer partnerships can help to test how these programs are performing without the need to constantly keep the same creatives on platform repeatedly throughout the year. 

Overall, lagging measurements/studies on social platforms are becoming increasingly accessible to brand marketers, which is fantastic due to the numerous benefits they offer. Brand lift studies provide marketers with valuable insights into consumer perceptions of their brand which can be used to optimize messaging, identify the most suitable platforms, and pinpoint where consumer engagement is highest. Additionally, these studies help understand the impact of social initiatives on KPIs and measure how messaging and initiatives affect overall ROI. Ultimately, lagging measurements are a crucial part of the campaign lifecycle and can significantly benefit your brand. If you’re interested in learning more about how these studies can measure the impact of an influencer strategy or paid social campaigns, please reach out to CMI Media Group’s Centered™ team.