Get your free personalized podcast brief
We scan new podcasts and send you the top 5 insights daily.
To solve the challenge of measuring traditionally hard-to-measure out-of-home (OOH) campaigns, SurveyMonkey established control markets. This data-driven approach allowed them to attribute a 7% increase in page views during a holiday period directly to the campaign, proving its effectiveness beyond simple impressions.
Related Insights
To prove marketing's value beyond clicks, use brand lift surveys (A/B testing ads) to measure awareness shifts. For sales impact, use causal impact modeling to compare forecasted sales (based on historical data) with actual sales during a campaign, isolating the campaign's "bump."
To test a specific tactic like out-of-home or connected TV, focus the entire campaign within one geographic region. By establishing a performance baseline before the campaign and then measuring the incremental lift in branded search or sales in that area, you can better isolate the tactic's true effect.
Tushy's out-of-home truck campaign isn't a 'spray and pray' tactic. The trucks use GPS and geofencing to ping nearby mobile device IDs. These IDs are then matched to home IP addresses to track subsequent website visits, providing directional data on the campaign's effectiveness and demystifying OOH measurement.
To prove marketing's ROI, run geo-fenced ad campaigns targeted at a specific set of retail locations. By comparing sales in these "test" stores against a control group of similar stores, you can measure the direct, incremental sales lift caused by your creative, providing black-and-white accountability.
To gauge the real impact of a campaign, isolate a small percentage of your audience (a "holdout group") from all marketing. The difference in conversion rates between this group and the targeted audience reveals your actual performance lift, moving beyond simple conversion metrics.
Instead of relying on vague brand metrics, Float measured the success of its billboard campaigns by observing the direct lift in its performance marketing. Demo requests, website visits, and even Google and LinkedIn ad performance all increased by 30-50% during and after the OOH flights.
To find the real impact of your marketing, intentionally exclude a small percentage (e.g., 5-10%) of your database from all campaign activities. By comparing the conversion rate of this "holdout group" to the group that received marketing, you can calculate the actual performance delta and determine if your efforts generated a genuine lift.
Don't treat OOH as an unmeasurable brand play. To win, apply the same rigor as digital marketing. Define specific KPIs and calls to action upfront, such as driving traffic to a unique landing page or tracking lift in a specific geographic area.
Moving beyond basic attribution, LinkedIn's new Conversion Lift Testing tool measures the causal impact of campaigns. It compares conversions between an ad-exposed group and a control group that saw no ads, allowing marketers to determine the true incremental value generated by their advertising.
To understand a specific channel's effectiveness (e.g., out-of-home), concentrate spend in one geographic area. By comparing metrics like branded search volume in that area against a pre-campaign baseline, you can measure the channel's incremental lift, though this method can be expensive.