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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