The Marketing Analytics Intersect
 

None of you will ever buy an ad in the Super Bowl.

Ok. Maybe this is more mathematically true: Almost none of you will ever buy and ad in the Super Bowl.

Last year an ad in the Super Bowl cost $5 mil for 30 seconds. If trends hold true, it will be close to $8 mil, or more, in 2019.

Still, even if you never buy a SB ad it is an insightful exercise for all of us to think about how to measure the impact of the large amount of spend for 30 seconds of large Reach.

Should buy an ad in the Super Bowl?

That decision is usually made by an Extremely Senior Leader (ESL) who will consider facts and other things to make that decision. Since we won't have an influence on that one way or the other, let's set how to make that decision aside.

The decision has been made to buy an ad in the Super Bowl, how should you measure the success of that decision?

Ponder that for just 30 seconds, before you continue reading.

Done?

Great, let's go...

First, Compute TCO.

Before we get going, Analysis Ninjas always keep the Total Cost of Ownership spirit in mind.

A $8 mil to air ad can actually cost anywhere from $8.5 mil - if you shot it on your iPhone with your company co-workers - to $40 mil by the time you end up accounting for:

Fees for the multiple agencies who worked on the ad
+ fees of the on-air talent you hired (M&M's assures me getting Danny Devito to float in a pool of chocolate for an SB ad is not cheap)
+ cost of shooting, editing, re-shooting with ESL notes, editing, and finalizing the ad
+ cost of the critical online and offline campaigns you'll surround your SB ad to ensure amplification and wear in (millions more)
+ compensation paid to your company employees

= $25 to $40 mil. Or a lot more.

Even when you compute a primitive ROI metric like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), remember not to be lame by using just the media cost of $8 mil to compute return. Use the TCO.

How much insurance would you have to sell to earn by $40 mil in profit (TCO of the SB campaign)?

Pro Tip: No matter what the ESL asks you to measure, always compute the total cost of that initiative and use that to compute bottom-line return to the company.

***

How do we currently measure the Super Bowl?

The singular, and valid, reason every Agency Executive or your company ESL will give you for buying the Super Bowl ad is... Capture Mass Audience.

Translation: Reach.

Massive Reach.

"Everyone on the planet is watching the Super Bowl, where else can we get that type of attention during this day and age?"

Hence, the primary measure of the Super Bowl ends up being how many people watched the Super Bowl.

Just getting that much attention is success.

Some will add getting ranked on a newspaper Top SB Ads lists as success.

Also in the running will be being ranked on the YouTube SB leader board, and "virality."

Throw in "social conversations," views on YouTube, and perhaps visits to website.

Aiming for attention is good. But, I think of it as necessary but not sufficient when it comes to measuring SB success.

After all, what did you really get that was of business value?

Activity ≠ Outcomes. :)

***

How should you measure your SB ad?

I would love to hear what outcomes you would measure for a spend of this scale that'll deliver Reach of this scale.

Let me offer some ideas to spark your imagination.

1. Shift in Intent (raw count).

From a brand marketing perspective the closest you'll get to an outcome is the desire to spend money. Otherwise known as Purchase Intent.

So. Measure that.

Not just as a percentage, but in raw humans.

By how much did you shift Purchase Intent? +11 points. Good.

How many people was that? 86,000. Good?

2. Half-Life of Brand Lift.

Unless you have a completely terrible Agency or the TV channel really stinks, you'll get Brand Lift metrics (Awareness, etc.) for free. And, pretty fast.

This is a good thing.

Consider this though: Almost all Super Bowl ads will be forgotten right after they air. Three will be remembered the next day. Those will be forgotten in 48 hours. The Super Bowl in its entirety will be forgotten completely in five days (faster if the political cycle is anything like it has been for the last two years).

So. If you managed to get Reach and assuming it was one of the three ads that survived the Super Bowl day as the top three it will get a bit more play and will certainly deliver on brand metrics like Ad Recall, Brand Awareness, etc.

I recommend something smart I like measuring: How long does it take you to lose half of what you gained from your Super Bowl ad?

I call my metric: Half-life of Brand Lift.

It will take between 6 hours to 5 days to lose half of what you gained.

What'd the Half-life of your SB Brand Lifts?

3. 90-day Incremental Sales.

You spend money to earn money. Most of the time. Ok, ok, I'm teasing my fellow Marketers. :)

My smart analytical peers will surely measure the pop they get in Sales the day after the Super Bowl. Perhaps even the week after. Then, everyone moves on.

You spent between $25 to $40 million (or more!) on the ad. Set higher standards for success, please.

Measure 90-day Incremental Sales.

Incremental, attributable to the Super Bowl. This might require some advanced modeling.

90-day assuming your product price is around $800 to $1000 per unit with decent volumes - to get some kind of worthy ROI.

(Yes, yes, I know that Attributable Profit from Super Bowl Ad is better. Baby steps. :))

4. Attributable DAUs over 180 days.

A metric similar to the one above, this one would apply to a mobile app or a social network or entities for whom making money requires acquiring users who'll interact with them every day (or more).

Incremental attributable Daily Active Users then is an excellent outcome metric you should track for your Super Bowl Ad.

You'll need some spiffy identity management system so that you can tag these incremental users and keep track of them. (But, if you are spending $40 mil on a SB ad you likely have it already. Remember to use it.)

Were the outcomes as measured by the above four metrics worth $25 to $40 million?

There are many other metrics of course.

If you are like Budweiser and thus far have spent $531 million on Super Bowl ads, you likely measure Phantom Brand Resonance (which drives long term sales).

I can keep going on, but I want to hear from you (and my wife is asking me to go to bed!).

Bottom-line: When you spend this much money, measuring things like Reach, Social Mentions, Sentiment in Tweets, and other vanity/lame/ephemeral/activity metrics is a disservice to your business. The Super Bowl is the perfect time time to obsess about innovation in outcomes measurement - after all there will be a lot of activity!

Don't miss this valuable opportunity. For the sake of your shareholders.

-Avinash.

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