Branding is finally coming of age in digital, and it's all thanks to measurement. 

For too long, brands have been forced to accept a raft of performance metrics that suit the industry, rather than measurements that reflect their needs. For brand advertisers, metrics like click-through rate have little value. They need tangible proof that their campaigns are delivering value and achieving their longer-term goals. While understanding the customer journey is critical, clicks offer little value and leave big gaps in their customer insights. Yet, in the absence of meaningful data, it's what they have had to put up with. It's about time things changed, and they are.

Branding moves mainstream

Thanks to companies like Brand Metrics, advertisers can put aside direct response metrics and start accessing rich, meaningful, relevant KPIs like brand awareness, consideration, brand preference and purchase intent. Furthermore, they can also determine their comparative values against industry benchmarks. Every brand lift measurement can be compared with advertisers in their sector, helping unearth deeper perspectives that can inform future strategies and activities.

Access to these metrics is a game-changer for brands. Advertisers can determine campaign success on their terms, giving them back control. It also benefits the industry since delivering brand-related metrics provides greater evidence of effect and, in turn, allows greater brand spend to be unlocked in future.

So how is this being achieved? Well, publishers play a critical role here. These metrics are gained by integrating a survey on a publisher's site and asking selected users about their attitude towards a brand. Importantly, these are not one-off snapshots. Publishers can use the technology to consistently measure and report how digital campaigns are performing and offer the rich, up-to-date and comparable insights that advertisers crave.

Proving brand uplift

And brands are already embracing this and benefiting.

We work with leading Swiss publishing group Ringier AG, helping them provide evidence of brand lift to their advertisers.

In a recent campaign for L'Oréal, promoting its La Roche-Posay dermo-cosmetic brand, Ringier was able to show that their campaign delivered a positive brand lift over the four key metrics, awareness, consideration, brand preference and action intent. But in addition to proving campaign success, equally valuable was the insight on how it was performing from an industry perspective. These highlighted that while La Roche-Posay enjoys a strong brand standing on mid-funnel metrics, consideration and preference, it ranks lower on action intent compared to other beauty brands. This additional insight allows L'Oréal to apply these learnings to future activity to develop and improve campaign effectiveness around specific metrics.

In relation to the campaign, Frank Burkhardt, CMO at L'Oréal, commented: "It was great to see evidence of high performance on the end-funnel metrics, preference and action intent, thanks to Brand Metrics' technology. With the overall goal of our recent campaign being to raise awareness about La Roche-Posay among Swiss consumers, these initial results are giving our brand team a clear idea on how to forward-plan to ensure the next campaign is even more successful. We are looking forward to building on this to ensure even greater campaign success going forward."

A true brand play

Fixing measurement in digital allows digital to be a true brand play, not just an environment for performance-based outcomes. By demonstrating the effectiveness of digital advertising to support brands, advertiser trust in the medium is being rebuilt. And what's good news for brands is equally good news for premium publishers. By offering their advertisers brand-related metrics, it strengthens their hand, helping them prove their environments deliver more effective advertising campaigns, and providing the opportunity to tap into more brand budgets. Finally, digital is catching up with the needs of brand advertisers.

/Sean Adams
Global Insight Diredctor, Brand Metrics