How brand lift studies illuminate marketing performance

A scientific approach to measuring paid media's impact on actual business growth

It's 2025 -- we've all moved beyond the tired brand vs. performance debate, correct?

And we understand the importance of brand as an indicator of sustained business growth.

But the challenge remains: how do we effectively measure brand outcomes for upper-funnel paid media campaigns?

The Challenge of Measuring Brand

Common brand metrics include:

• awareness

• favorability

• perceived quality, and

• advocacy

  
  

  These metrics are inherently challenging to measure because they require either:

• Direct consumer feedback through surveys, panels, or focus groups; or

• Indirect behavioral indicators such as branded search volume or social listening tools

There's no perfect solution! At Exverus, we prefer taking a scientific approach through brand lift studies.

Understanding Brand Lift Studies

A brand lift study employs a test-and-control methodology, comparing a test group (people exposed to ads) against a control group (people not exposed to ads but otherwise similar).

This approach offers significant advantages:

• It controls for external factors that might impact brand perception, such as negative press or viral content

• Unlike brand search trends or social listening, it specifically accounts for media exposure, allowing us to isolate the impact of marketing campaigns

Brand Lift Study Challenges & Solutions

While brand lift studies represent one of the most valid ways to measure advertising impact, they come with their own set of challenges:

Ad Exposure Determination

Tracking ad exposure typically involves placing pixels on creative assets to digitally monitor viewership. However, this approach isn't feasible across all channels:

• Many social media platforms restrict this tracking capability

• Traditional channels like TV, radio, and out-of-home don't support digital tracking

The common alternative is an opportunity to see (OTS) methodology, where survey respondents' reported media consumption is matched against media placement timing.

In our experience, OTS works well for certain channels like TV or radio but yields inconsistent results for others like social media.

Cross-Channel Contamination

Modern consumers fluidly move between mobile, video, and TV multiple times daily, making channel-level impact testing challenging. When we're trying to compare ad-exposed versus non-exposed individuals, channel-level brand impact testing can be contaminated with other ad exposures.

Sample Matching Limitations

The methodology assumes test and control groups are identical except for ad exposure. We attempt to ensure this through sample matching based on demographics, geography, or online behaviors—but no two samples are 100% alike!

The Importance of Data Integration

Scientific measurement is inherently complex and sometimes messy. That's why we recommend integrating multiple data sources to corroborate brand lift results.

For example, if your study shows no significant lift from advertising but your searches and sales show substantial increases, you have good reason to believe your campaign was effective despite the study results.

The Exverus Approach

When making complex decisions about advertising strategy or evaluating campaign performance, we believe in considering multiple information sources and leveraging expert analysis.

Our director of data analytics, Charles Lai, leads a team of seasoned statistics experts who can glean the strongest possible insights for your brand. Learn more about brand lift measurement from Charles below: