Brand measurement research using the DoubleClick for Advertisers platform

We think that better online brand measurement is a hugely important area where technology can play a significant role. We’ll have much more to announce in the coming months; but we wanted to highlight one early experiment. Our research team is working with our clients and Vizu to conduct online brand measurement research for about 70 DFA campaigns.

The IAB’s publication on online ad effectiveness measurement noted that true experimental design (creating consistent, randomly assigned control groups) would be a major step forward in online ad effectiveness research. Our approach does just that. We use DoubleClick ad serving technology to create two randomly selected groups of users - one that sees the campaign’s ads, and another that sees public service ads instead. We maintain this control group for the duration of the campaign, across all sites where DFA serves ads. Vizu’s sampling technology is then used to deliver a brand lift survey to all users so that we may individually measure variables like brand awareness, purchase intent and favorability.

The brand results, presented through DFA, will show how ads performed across the campaign, as well as different sites and ad frequencies. This data can be used with the other campaign metrics in DFA to help marketers to see the impact of the campaign using any metric they want - from impressions to clicks to brand impact to conversions.

Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President of Research, Analytics and Measurement at the IAB commented, “This is very promising and innovative research. After years of settling for less than optimal designs, the industry will finally see if a true experimental design is possible through the use of technology. The results of this research, if successful, could have far reaching implications for the future of brand impact measurement of online advertising campaigns.”

DoubleClick is sponsoring the survey research for all participating clients. We hope this pilot will show that the use of experimental design principles is a great way to address the brand measurement challenge, and to provide real and actionable insights to brand marketers. It’s one of our early stage efforts to re-imagine measurement for online marketers.

To participate in the Brand Lift experiments pilot with DoubleClick and Vizu, you can contact either your DoubleClick or Vizu sales representative for more information and eligibility requirements.

Posted by Jim Dravillas, Google Research team