In display advertising, click-through and view-through are popular measurement options, though their actual impact on consumers can often be hard to analyse. In today’s digitised and omnichannel world, the consumer journey is becoming increasingly complex, and knowing the role that an advertisement plays in the path to purchase is a challenge.
By accurately assessing the impact of display advertising, especially display impressions, within the context of the entire consumer journey rather than only one step of the journey or one channel, marketers are provided insight into the value an ad is driving and become empowered to effectively optimise their display strategies.
The question is – how can marketers measure the impact of each ad effectively, and make informed decisions based on the insights they receive?
How to look beyond Click-Throughs
Typically, display measurement looks at click and view-through rates. Display advertising has notoriously low click-through rates (CTRs), and even though marketers are aware the channel has a greater effect on the sales funnel than is suggested, it can be difficult to validate based on clicks alone.
At the other end of the tracking arc is view-through, or post-impression, which is the act of attempting to assign a conversion to a single impression. This method is problematic in itself because it relies on long attribution windows, which lead to an over-inflation of the estimated value of the ad.
Marketers face a challenge when trying to prove the effectiveness of display ads beyond CTRs, most commonly because they do not have a well-rounded measurement solution.
Combatting the complexity of impression-based performance attribution
Impression-based performance attribution looks at the customer journey as a whole, and the impact of each impression on subsequent sales is an invaluable element of the technology. This is best done through tracking impressions to site visits in hours, rather than weeks, thus understanding which impression touchpoints have provoked converting visits.
The benefit of this approach is that it allows marketers to make informed decisions and invest only in the ads that contributed to conversion, rather than overinvestment into ineffective ads. Impressions, when properly observed, have a huge role to play for marketers in understanding the influences of various channels or stages of a consumer’s purchase behaviour.
Measuring engagement
Combatting the complexity of impression-based performance attribution can also be made by using the engagement metric. Often overlooked, ad engagement can be an extremely useful metric for measuring the true effectiveness of display ads.
Engagement is a unique way to understand if an ad was actually seen or has been interacted with. It provides marketers with another valuable measure of the effectiveness of a display ad, which goes far beyond the simple impressions and click measurement. It also eliminates the issue of impressions, not seen, or below the fold, as it has had to of been viewed to be engaged with. Payment based on engagement can be used to combat click fraud.
Another positive is that tracking engagement delivers many consumer behaviour insights – including product scrolling, clicks within ads, video plays, and so on – which marketers can use to fine-tune their display campaigns and strategies.
Incremental impact and the changing face of marketing
In order to really future-proof a marketing strategy, it is essential to examine the incremental impact on a consumer’s propensity to convert. This achieves a number of goals, including:
- Deeper understanding of messaging and creative performance
- Enabling a more informed decision-making process around budget allocation (particularly in display)
- A maintenance of an A/B testing model that exists across each new campaign
Incremental impact is all dependent on a continuity of testing. Without it, brands risk internal and third party factors, such as seasonal fluctuations, or changes in audience data unduly influencing results. Such fluctuations lead to inconsistencies that can render test results useless.
Implementing an attribution measurement solution can be a powerful tool for marketers as it takes a holistic approach, and considers the entire consumer journey. The transparent view provided by accurate measurement and an attribution model allows marketers to achieve the best results from their display advertising. Multi-channel performance data delivers powerful insights into various touchpoints, working to provide marketers with the necessary context needed to understand how budgets and campaigns are truly performing.
By Rakuten Marketing APAC MD Anthony Capano.