ANALYTICS

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SECTION TWO

The Future of Advertising Campaign Measurement Is Here

By Andrew Appel

In a time when a typical person is exposed to an average of 5,000 advertisements per day - compared to

the 500 the average person viewed 30 years ago - retailers and advertisers realize the importance of cutting through the clutter and reaching shoppers in new and meaningful ways.

Today’s “ad overload” presents many challenges for retailers, but also many opportunities. It’s changing the shopper path to purchase. It’s changing shopper sentiment toward advertising. To maximize the effectiveness of media on consumer behavior, marketers and advertisers must put an emphasis on linking marketing efforts - both media and retail - directly to sales lift.

Shoppers are fast-paced; they’re tech-savvy and demand personalization and instant gratification more and more. The amount of media channels and content providers has exploded. This means the death of “after-the-fact” campaign measurement that’s focused solely on how many people saw the ad. Marketers and advertisers no longer need to sit idle for the duration of an advertising campaign or promotion and assess the effectiveness of ad spend on in-store sales lift weeks or months later. This is no longer prudent. Measurement and in-campaign targeting rebalancing should now be continuous in order to optimize efforts and eliminate frustrated retrospection on how campaigns “could have” performed better.

Data-driven solutions that develop highly targeted audiences in order to continuously tie them to the impact of the media on in-store sales are changing the game. It’s safe to say that the future of advertising campaign measurement is big data and is linking sales to media exposure with real-time optimization. Luckily, for retailers looking to truly connect with shoppers through their advertising efforts, the future of advertising campaign measurement is here.

Real-Time Optimization

A critical competitive differentiator for advertisers and marketers and their clients is the ability to adjust campaigns mid-flight based on high-quality, in-depth insights. Traditional measurement solutions that can’t offer mid-campaign intelligence will surely falter, as the ability to make instantaneous, data-driven changes to a campaign will drastically increase ROAS, eliminating waste.

For example, if a major retailer sought to maximize the impact of a digital campaign to measure campaign lift for a new product launch, it could use real-time sales lift measurement to identify which aspects of the campaign are driving the best results. If two creative pieces are outperforming others and increasing sales, and certain socioeconomic groups and geographical regions are more responsive to the campaign overall, this retailer could reallocate ad spend to more aggressively reach these groups and bolster the successful creative pieces. If more resources are allocated to the best-performing aspects and most-responsive socioeconomic categories, the campaign will be more compelling and impactful, building brand trust while accelerating sales. Why spend money trying to reach a group that, according to extensive data sets and campaign feedback, will not purchase this new product?

Vast and Varied Set of Data

Advertisers and marketers can more accurately make immediate campaign adjustments if they are able to back these decisions by vast and varied data sets. For effective advertising campaign measurement, there is no such thing as too much data or too much granularity. Solutions that rely on one retailer’s frequent shopper program don’t use detailed purchase panels for projections or don’t adjust for the many causal variables beyond the ad itself and are much less accurate than those that take all data into consideration. The most accurate campaign measurement solutions should account for point-of-sale (POS) data, frequent shopper and loyalty data, geographical location, demographics, and media type, as well as causal variables, such as price gaps, promotion intensities, features, weather, and accessory advertising. These critical data sources provide the granularity necessary to accurately optimize media campaigns in real time. Making mid-campaign decisions without the insights provided by comprehensive data sets is akin to a doctor removing an organ believed to be causing a patient pain without conducting all the necessary diagnostic tests.

Intuitive Display for Actionable Results

So, you have the data, but how do you easily and rapidly make sense of it in order to make campaign-altering decisions? A truly effective real-time, data-driven campaign measurement solution conveys trends, media performance, and consumer responsiveness in an intuitive, straightforward manner. The solution should effortlessly disseminate decision-influencing information, such as total campaign results and sub-campaign-level results, including creative, ad placement, publisher, targeting, and other relevant breakouts, to clearly communicate optimization opportunities to clients and facilitate immediate decisions.

Future

More data is more, while less advertisement inundation is more. As data sets grow in depth and reach and the consumer becomes more connected across all channels, advertising campaign measurement solutions will be able to reach new levels of speed and accuracy. We are not too far away from tying all the demand levers, such as advertising, promotions, emails, billboards, and social communications, to individual, real-time exposure and purchase behavior for true 1:1 personalized relationship development. This benefits the consumer who seeks more relevant, useful content and less constant advertisement bombardment, and will enable marketers, advertisers, and retailers to ignite their campaigns to surpass expectations and deliver unprecedented levels of growth.

Andrew Appel is President and CEO of Information Resources, Inc. (IRI).

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