Marketing is a crucial investment for any business. Thoughtful brand management, messaging, and advertising drive sales, attract new customers, and keep audiences engaged.
In consumer industries, where advertising efforts are strongest, brands spend about 12% of revenue on marketing. This means spending across content marketing, trade shows, search engine optimization, and advertising – but the majority of this ad spend goes unmeasured.
Without tracking outcomes, how can brands know if ad investment is driving a return? Substantial thought, creativity, and capital is poured into ad campaigns, but only with measurement can brands understand which inputs — targeting, messaging, creative, timing — are driving results. Without it, marketers cannot know what works and what doesn’t, wasting millions of dollars on underperforming strategies.
Measurement helps advertisers optimize spending, refine messaging, and ensure strategies and tactics remain aligned with brand goals across campaigns. But what’s the right approach?
Digital ecosystems across search, social, programmatic channels offer countless opportunities to measure and track campaign performance. Ad measurement involves tracking multiple metrics and indicators to determine the success of a campaign against a plan or goal, whether that means reaching the right audience, raising brand awareness, or ultimately driving sales.
Different digital metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) can help marketers determine if campaigns are paying off — and driving return on ad spend (ROAS).
Quantifying which strategies perform best allows businesses to optimize budgets for growth, reduce waste, and build lasting brands. Data-driven insights reveal behavior patterns, helping operators uncover opportunities to reach new customers, prove value to stakeholders, and win a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Today, marketing measurement is incredibly nuanced. Varied marketing channels, differing attribution models, and limitations on data collection make performance measurement difficult. Hoping for a clearer picture of consumer preferences and behavior across channels, brands are increasingly turning to agnostic marketing analytics tools, but there is more to measurement than just in-campaign performance tracking.
Brand studies measure and quantify metrics that are difficult to directly attribute to a single campaign. When a shopper selects Coca-Cola at the grocery store, is this because he or she was prompted in the moment with a targeted ad? With today’s technology, it’s possible. Just as likely, however, it is the compound effect of exposure over the course of a lifetime, an awareness of what Coca-Cola is and what the brand stands for. We use Coke in this example for the same reason — with near universal brand awareness, we expect you’ve heard of it.
Ad measurement research that goes beyond CTR and CPA can quantify this brand halo. Metrics like brand awareness, perception, and purchase intent can be measured against specific ads, campaigns, strategies, and audiences. Creating testing empowers marketers to select the right messages, stories, and visuals before a campaign is launched.
Measuring brand metrics outcomes helps marketers build durable, differentiated, and engaging brands. Understanding how messages, visuals, and strategies resonate with different age groups, demographics, or geographics allows brands to optimize campaigns for different audiences, driving stronger outcomes in the long term.
Ad measurement isn’t only about performance metrics. It’s about tracking what matters to maximize impact long-term and build strong, well-recognized brands. Businesses that leverage data-driven insights throughout the entire funnel can fine-tune their strategies, cut wasted spend, and drive higher returns. How are you measuring your brand outcomes?
Interested in a free audit of your marketing strategy? Reach us at hello@practical.nyc
