Brand Lift Study 101

Brand lift studies allow us to better measure the impact of ads on our brand with metrics. With these tests, we can better understand an ad’s effect on various brand metrics, such as brand favorability, familiarity, or product consideration.

Depending on your goals for the study, here are a few ways to think about brand lift, and the metrics you’ll need to calculate:

Absolute brand lift: This value helps measure the impact of ads by showing the difference in responses between those who saw ads and those who didn’t.

(percentage of desirable responses in the test group) - (percentage of desirable responses in the control group)

Relative brand lift: This value helps measure the onsite impact of ads by showing the difference in responses between those who saw the ads and those who didn’t.

(number of desired responses in the test group - number of desired responses in the control group) / (number of desired responses in the control group)

Estimated total lift: This value uses total reach to estimate the change in the total number of people who would give a desirable response to our survey as a result of our ads.

👥 A subset of two separate groups will receive brand surveys. The two groups surveyed are:

Both groups should represent the audiences who you intend to target in your ad campaigns. Participants in the test group won’t receive a brand survey until they’ve received an ad impression.

Each brand survey displays a question that corresponds to one of the metrics we select to test. It’s possible that respondents could see a second brand survey question using a different brand metric. Responses can’t be changed once submitted.

Nearly every advertising platform offers the ability to perform a brand lift study either through their platform, or through a provider.

We can choose to measure any number of brand metrics, then determine the questions included in the surveys. We recommend asking the same questions across all platforms.