Effectively measuring advertising performance: Your guide to success

Accurately measuring outcomes has long been the goal of advertising and marketing teams. In fact, lack of consistent measurement for programmatic ads is the #1 problem nearly half of marketers face today.

The ability to know if advertising is effective, and answering questions such as “What worked?” “What didn’t?” and “Why?” is integral to improving marketing performance. There is no data-driven marketing without measurement.

The challenge with measuring digital advertising is that it’s no longer about measuring clicks, conversions, or even sales. It’s about understanding the holistic view of performance that enables teams to better understand how to optimize all parts of the campaign.

Fortunately, advancements in technology mean the digital marketing industry is closer than ever to effectively measuring business impact.

Curated from Oracle’s team of data, strategy, and product measurement experts, here is a 4-step guide to effectively measuring advertising performance:

1. Begin by aligning media measurement strategies with business objectives to track the right metrics and determine the true effectiveness of your campaigns.

Instead of focusing on a specific campaign to define business objectives and KPIs, build 2 to 3 primary business objectives. Then determine which campaigns are best suited to address those objectives. For example:

2. Identify the critical criteria that will provide a detailed overview of how your campaign and ads are performing.

If in doubt, consider the baseline metrics that are commonly used for display, video, and mobile ads listed here:

3. Track the effectiveness of your campaigns by assessing three core areas:

• Media quality: Are your ads reaching the right people, and are they paying attention?

• Brand safety: Are your ads being placed in the most relevant, suitable environments?

• Performance and ROI: Did your ads perform?

4. Align with your team on a reporting cadence.

• How often will stakeholders want to see results?

• What is the most effective communication process between brands and agencies?

Measuring digital campaigns has always been a challenge for even the most advanced advertisers. The need to understand who saw an ad and where seems so simple, but due to changing landscapes, varying industry benchmarks and disparate measurement partners, it’s hard to know which data to trust. That’s not even accounting for more complex metrics like ROI, reach and frequency, and cross-platform/channel performance.

Marketers need to learn quickly and optimize faster. It’s critical that you don’t rely on impressions alone to drive these decisions, but actually verify the quality of engagement on demand in the media to ensure budgets aren’t wasted

True efficiency happens when you’re able to execute these steps seamlessly. Learn how the ability to capture in-flight campaign optimization will put your brand in a place to define the future of measurement. 

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Want to make your measurement strategy truly effective at capturing consumer attention? Download our FREE guide to going beyond ad verification: