How the ad industry really measures success in the COVID age

We are living in the age of Big Data. Getting a handle on the metrics that measure campaign success matters on any given day, month or year, but never more so than during the Great Disruption. Despite the recovering economy, dollars and budgets are not as free-flowing as they once were, and the pressure is higher than ever for ad spend to equate to brand success.

“We aim to develop projects that help brands stand out in the midst of a tumultuous economic environment,” says Jalila Levesque, head of global communications and partner at FRED & FARID. “A campaign that touches people’s hearts when we dare to approach a broader topic behind the ad helps us strike, while also bringing meaning to our job.” That’s why agency leaders are increasingly looking beyond numbers when it comes to evaluating the metrics around success, looking at less-tangible factors like whether the work was meaningful, culturally relevant and what kind of impact it made. “Analyzing the results of a campaign only through the lens of numbers seems wrong today,” says Levesque. “Agencies and brands have a bigger responsibility—the responsibility to participate in culture and to help make the world a better place.”

We surveyed the Amp community this month to get a sense of what measuring success means in 2021—which metrics really matter, and which don’t.

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Measuring the work that works

When it comes to measuring success, most agency leaders agree that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Evaluating whether a campaign worked means first looking at what that campaign entailed, and who it was for. “This is entirely customized to each client and their needs,” says Douglas Brundage, founder and CEO of Kingsland. “Often, it’s one of the first questions we ask—what does success for this program look like? If the client doesn’t know, we help them make this decision.”

Having that clarity and alignment between agency and client from the outset could make all the difference in the outcome of a project. Part of making that happen comes down to quality of communication. “What seems obvious but isn’t always clear from every client brief is the need to get precise on what success is and how it will be measured,” explains Angela Jones, senior VP and head of strategy at Laundry Service. “Get real and get specific about what you want to change, create or do, then figure out the right way to track that impact.”

A clear vision translates to clear objectives, so the critical stage of successful measurement could come long before the campaign is even created. “It’s all about designing media plans around our client’s business goals,” says Chris Finnegan, VP and integrated media director at Cornett. “After formulating how we will effectively reach their target audience using the appropriate channels and tactics, we carefully outline the role that each will play in driving prospects efficiently down the funnel to take the desired action—web traffic, foot traffic, e-commerce sales, lead generation, etc.”

Setting expectations from the outset of a campaign means getting on the same page as clients regarding how success will be defined from all angles, from evaluating the content itself to measuring its reach and consumer reactions. “In the upfront of every campaign, we outline a measurement framework to ensure alignment on how we’ll measure success with our clients,” says Jessica Neville Tinetti, group strategy director of content at Dagger. “Measurement strategies are customized based on a client’s specific business and marketing goals with methodologies like creative ad evaluation research demonstrating content efficacy, brand health studies that provide metrics among the target audience over time and social listening to measure consumer sentiment.”

What works for one client on one campaign might look totally different from the goals and challenges on another. Some agencies go one step further in measuring success via the metric of team satisfaction, which is far less quantifiable but just as important for success from an agency perspective. “Each project has its own relevant success metrics—usually highly contextual to the industry and product we’re building,” says Leah Rajaratnam, director of product management at Work & Co. “There is, however, a broader framework that applies across every project we undertake: Untangle and address the most important business problems for the client, create an experience that is equal parts valuable and delightful for the end-user, and ensure each member of our own team takes pride in both their unique contributions and the final product.”

Ultimately, that last metric—especially in an industry so dependent on the value brought in by creatives—ranks as highly as its more technical counterparts. “Whether it relates to my team or clients, happiness and satisfaction are both at the forefront of measuring the success of my work,” says Chandni Kothari, associate director at Croud. “Trust lies at the basis of these relationships, as it does with my team. Their satisfaction in the workplace is indicative of my success in leading the team.”

Keeping people top of mind when evaluating the success of one project or another also means investing in the resources that make that success possible. “We design brand interactions and experiences that make stakeholders proud, allow people to do their job better with the technologies we implement, promote frictionless client services and supports visionaries to be change-makers,” says Goran Paunovic, principal and creative director at ArtVersion. “If that fusion happens, we know our work has been a success.”

Staff satisfaction isn’t just a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to measuring success internally. Whether a campaign resonates with the people behind it, as well as the people who make up that organization—not to mention future prospects—is a crucial part of success measurement across industries. “The metric that matters most in 2021 is company buy-in,” says Adrian Owen Jones, chief growth officer at ThreeSixtyEight. “Companies are seeing a mass exodus—what is being called ‘The Great Resignation’—because of the gap between what they espouse as their values, and what they actually do day-to-day. We help our clients give their teams something to believe in and a reason to stay, and top candidates are looking for companies that practice what they preach.”

Though perhaps more important today than in past years, that principle has remained a constant. The numerical metrics used in evaluating a campaign’s performance, on the other hand, have been subject to far more flux from year to year. “As the digital ecosystem evolves and we start to feel the impact of changing tracking capabilities, we should be reviewing metrics that can help us optimize and navigate through a cookie-less world,” says Jamie Hoey, Australia managing director at Croud. “Ultimately, we need to ensure that we are giving priority to the metrics that help us achieve success in our primary objective, which is to help our clients’ business grow.”

Staying on top of that evolution could mean delivering more relevant results to clients, as well as meaningful impact. “The marketing world evolved from competing for share of voice through media investments, which became uneconomical as the digital age set in, to share of relevance through cookies. Cookies are now becoming eradicated, which is shifting the market to share of sentiment,” explains Brett Channer, Mass Minority founder and CEO. “Adjacent to this new frontier is volumetric behavior data analytics, which is 2.4 times more accurate—and more dependable—on predictive contribution to share of market than share of voice is today.” According to Channer, today’s most relevant metrics revolve around “efficiency, equity and effectiveness,” and orienting tracking around these factors will lead to stronger ROI.

The MVPs of metrics

The pandemic has contributed to shifting priorities in the world of analytics and metrics, with the primary shift revolving around a brand’s ability to respond nimbly to change and challenges. “Brand health knowledge and the ability to pivot quickly is critical,” says Emilie Lee, Just Global’s senior VP of global analytics. “If brands aren’t aware of where they sit in their space across paid, owned and earned, and where their strengths and weaknesses lie, no matter how perfectly a campaign initiative is crafted and executed, the peripheral noise may be too significant to move the needle.”

In a world of shrinking attention spans and ever-growing volume of competing voices, that self-knowledge can make or break a brand’s success. “The very-difficult-to-measure metric that matters most has to be, simply, attention,” says Michael Silberberg, VP of global partnerships at Admix. “Measuring brand lift, brand recall and mixed media modeling is not a perfect science, and I can’t tell you we have the silver bullet. But if you want to get your brand in your consumer’s mind with a positive association, engaging their focused attention without disrupting what they are actually there to do has got to be key.”

Within the social media space, measuring that level of attention is slightly more straightforward. “Engagement helps extend organic reach, and even more importantly, shows you whether or not you have an audience that’s paying attention,” says Danielle Wiley, CEO of Sway Group. “Instead of focusing on how many people see your promoted content online, analyze the actions people take when they encounter that content.”

Once that content reaches users, brands have an entry point and an opportunity for longer-term relationships with consumers. “Once the audience is attracted to the content, you can build on that momentum with consistency and quality to maintain attention,” says Jonah Ballow, managing partner and head of content strategy and production at Heartlent Group. “After these two objectives are met, the larger audience will ideally interact and engage with the content, and monetization can be achieved at a high level. Building out true communities and co-creating content with your consumers should be a key goal.”

For agencies, when evaluating the success of client work, the ability to monetize and help grow businesses will always be of paramount importance. No matter the industry or type of campaign, success should generally equal more sales. “As creative marketers, we are not artists,” says Kingsland’s Brundage. “We need to incept campaigns that integrate into culture and drive purchase—period, point blank. This is our job as leaders in the advertising and marketing community.”

One of the few metrics that can stand alone in an evaluation of campaign success, growth in sales doesn’t necessarily rely on another measurement to paint a picture of whether an initiative worked or not. “Our advertising campaigns need to drive action,” says Matt Johnson, CMO at Two by Four. “We are holding our creative and media accountable with our analytics tracking, running robust marketing mix modeling exercises to determine the effectiveness of our advertising when driving awareness and sales ROI.”

Specific industries also carry their own unique sets of metrics. In the world of gaming, measuring success means understanding what gamers are passionate about and what they may be seeking out from the gaming experience. “Accountability and action build trust with gamers,” says Jorge Prado, co-founder of Admazing Co. “If we were to single out a key metric that guides our success, we would support net promoter score, which helps us gauge performance as a complement to measure satisfaction outcome: the number of referrals by actual clients, increase in revenue per current client and customer success team performance.”

For businesses in the e-commerce space, the key measure of success is more of a moving target. “Our customers measure success at various points throughout the shopping journey,” says Evan Duck, senior manager of customer success at MikMak. “We caution against overemphasizing any measurement in isolation, and provide benchmarks and sales attribution reporting so brands know in real time which of their strategies are actually driving sales and how their outcome compares against not just past performance, but also their category and competition.”

The metrics due for a downgrade

Without overly generalizing or doing away with tools that have historically served the ad and marketing world well, there are some go-to metrics that may not be as relevant as they once were. “Metrics that align with where the business is trying to go rather than where the business has been are of critical importance,” says Kenneth Blake, VP of analytics at AMP Agency, citing engagement as a metric that’s often overly valued or misunderstood. “If the line between an engagement metric and business impact cannot be clearly drawn, that engagement metric is just a distraction.”

Work & Co.’s Rajaratnam echoes the same sentiment and stresses the importance of context when it comes to placing importance metrics like engagement: “Time spent on a website could mean deep engagement with your content, or it could mean users can’t find what they’re looking for. Context is everything when interpreting data.”

For others, it’s impressions that have been allotted more importance than they’re due. “With reach and impressions, it’s possible to determine how many people were exposed to a piece of campaign content, but that’s it. You don’t know if they liked it, hated it or didn’t see it at all as they were scrolling by,” says Sway Group’s Wiley. “Neither of those metrics offer any useful insight into how the content was received, and yet they’re all too often over-valued by brands.”

Impressions also tell us nothing about who is viewing an ad or campaign, or whether they’re part of a brand’s desired target. “We know at this point that the walled gardens built by Facebook and Google can obscure real insight and prevent measurement of some of the most impactful actions,” says Kingsland’s Brundage. “We also know that at one point over half of all paid programmatic impressions were not ever viewed by a human.”

Most metrics have their place within a larger ecosystem of analytics, but rarely have the power to offer a genuine picture of campaign success when they stand alone. “While impressions, target rating points, share of voice and clickthrough rate all have their place, they are only a piece of a much larger equation,” says Two By Four’s Johnson. “Are we reaching the right audience? Are we reaching them with messaging they get value from? How is our advertising moving our client’s business forward? We need to take a step back and ‘connect the pipes’ to really understand the impact and best optimize.”

The same can be argued for CPM as well as CTR, says Cornett’s Finnegan. “It is part of the story, but without looking at the analytics to determine post-click insights around metrics like bounce rate and pageviews, you may be missing key data that points to how effective your advertising efforts really are.”

Laundry Service’s Angela Jones would add brand lift to that list of overly hyped standalone metrics. “Rather than relying on the individual platforms to report on how campaigns perform, it would be more useful if brands got back to doing more independent tracking and measurement again,” says Jones. “The difference could mean new perspectives and competitive advantage.”

Similarly, on the social media side of the spectrum, follower count has been taken to signal something it may not, seen as a necessary piece of a brand’s online success. “A larger following does not equate to more customers,” says Dagger’s Neville Tinetti. “Brands should focus more on measuring the quality of their content to keep audiences coming back.”

Heartlent Group’s Ballow tells a similar story when it comes to evaluating a thriving audience on social media: “For both influencers and brands, we’d much rather have a small, engaged audience targeted to achieve our goals. Quality over quantity definitely applies to your followers.”

While each of these metrics serves its function, how they fit into the bigger picture is the key. In 2021, brands moving away from traditional vanity metrics and toward more meaningful conversations on measuring impact are the ones that will ultimately be best positioned to understand—and cater to—their consumers. “Most teams have the technical chops to deliver on metrics like views or impressions,” says ThreeSixtyEight’s Owen Jones. “What will really determine your value is how you advance a company’s long-term goals, build sustainable, authentic engagement and deliver consistent revenue gains.”

Beyond the numbers, especially given the degree to which consumers today take stock in brand values, impact should be considered in a global sense. “What will you do today to make the world a bit better than it was yesterday? How will you use your craft in an effort to move your clients and their brands to focus on creating better tomorrows for all?” Jason Musante, Huge’s chief creative officer, asks. “Sound ambitious? That’s exactly the point.”