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Conversion lift: The effective way of measuring digital success

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Online advertising began with clicks and cookies. Today, brands and marketers still rely on these tools to measure the success of online ads.But with the rise of mobile and social displays, as well as the fusion of online and offline channels, these tools face limitations.Measurement has become one of the biggest challenges facing advertisers today.Advertisers rely a lot on measurement to make decisions about where to invest their marketing dollars, but currently the industry lags behind with the evolving digital landscape and here’s why:Over-reliance on clicksWhile last-click attribution makes sense for search marketing, it’s less useful for other digital or display environments.Counting clicks doesn’t account for the value created by simply seeing ads, especially those ads which are produced to raise brand awareness rather than triggering immediate action online.Clicks also don’t necessarily correlate to in-store sales. For example, studies of Facebook campaigns show that more than 90% of ad-driven in-store comes from people who saw the ad, but didn’t click on it.The rapid shift to mobileThe technology that supports current measurement systems (cookies to track exposure and tie to behaviour, and clicks as a proxy for sales) is not sufficient in a world where people use multiple devices throughout the day and the majority of purchases still happen in a physical store.This is a challenge that rings true especially for a market such as Hong Kong, where people have an average of three to four devices, and where more than 90% of 4.5 million Facebook users access the social platform via mobile.Ineffective testing methodsFinally, there hasn’t been a widely adopted standard to determine the direct impact of digital advertising on the bottom line. It is even more challenging for advertisers from brick-and-mortar stores and consumer industries who want to see how their digital marketing drove sales.All of these factors make it difficult for advertisers today to see the full picture of their digital marketing campaigns, and determine which channel drove what result. This is why it’s not about clicks and engagement anymore, it’s about conversion lift.Lift measurement uses a scientific approach to determine additional business driven from people as result of Facebook ads. This approach is based on a scientific approach, which has long been successfully applied in the field of science and medicine to determine the efficacy of new treatments and medicines.The evolution of measurement at Facebook naturally led us to focus more on lift capabilities of ads on our platform. In 2013, in addition to the conversion pixels and custom audience pixels, we announced a measurement capability that allowed brick-and-mortar stores to measure how their Facebook ads drove in-store sales.Now, we’re making this type of measurement more widely available right within the Facebook interface, giving advertisers across the world the ability to determine which ads are driving real business results, therefore helping them to more effectively allocate their ad spend.Here’s how it works:1. When creating a Facebook campaign, a randomised test group (people that see ads) and control group (people that don’t) are established. By holding other variables such as gender, age and interests constant, Facebook can then measure the true effect of Facebook ads.2. The advertiser securely shares conversion data from the campaign with Facebook. Typically, this data comes from sources such as the conversion pixel or secure point-of-sale data.3. Facebook determines additional lift generated from the campaign by comparing conversions in the test and control groups.We’re already seeing great results with conversion lift.For example, Open Colleges, Australia’s leading online learning provider, used a conversion lift study to measure the full impact of its Facebook campaigns. Results from the study revealed a 95% lift in conversion rates for website inquiries and a 12% lift in offline enrolments. The study also showed the cost-per-acquisition was 23% lower than what Open Colleges’ last click model had indicated.With this streamlined way for advertisers to measure conversion lift, they can now accurately determine additional business driven by people reached by Facebook ads, and it’s now easier for them to use this tool on a regular basis with automated and standard reports created close to real-time.What’s more, online and offline conversions are now measured using the same Facebook features and methodology.We believe it is important that we as an industry adopt lift because it’s the metric that best proves ad effectiveness.Bryan Wang is head of marketing science at Facebook Greater China

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