Key performance indicators (KPIs) are crucial metrics that help businesses measure the effectiveness and impact of their advertising campaigns. Choosing the right KPIs provides vital insights that can inform strategic decisions about current and future campaigns. This article will explore the most important KPIs for assessing advertising performance across different channels and platforms.
Brand Awareness KPIs
Building brand awareness is a key objective for many advertising campaigns. Tracking metrics related to brand awareness provides insight into how well your ads are increasing visibility and reach. Here are some of the top brand awareness KPIs:
- Brand search volume – The number of people searching for your brand name or keywords indicates growing awareness.
- Social media followers/engagement – Increased followers and engagement on social platforms shows your brand is resonating.
- Website traffic from advertising – More visitors from ad clicks demonstrates ads are working to drive traffic.
- Ad recall surveys – Feedback surveys can measure aided or unaided brand recall lifted by ads.
Engagement KPIs
Engagement metrics allow you to track how well your ads capture attention and interact with your target audience. Some key advertising engagement KPIs include:
- Click-through rate (CTR) – Compares ad clicks to impressions to measure engagement.
- Landing page views – Analyze landing page traffic driven by ads.
- Bounce rate – Assess how long users stay on the landing page after clicking an ad.
- Social engagement rate – Measures interactions like shares, comments or likes generated by social ads.
Conversion KPIs
Tracking conversion KPIs is crucial for understanding the direct business impact of your advertising. Goals and definitions may vary, but common conversion KPIs include:
- Sales revenue – Total revenue or ROI generated from ad conversions.
- Cost per acquisition – Compares ad spend to customers acquired from the campaign.
- Conversion rate – Percentage of ad clicks or impressions that convert into a desired action.
- Form fill rate – Measures ad success at driving form submissions.
- Cost per lead – Compares spend to number of leads captured from ads.
Brand Lift KPIs
Brand lift refers to the impact advertising has on brand metrics like familiarity, consideration and favorability. Surveys can measure brand lift by comparing brand tracking metrics between an exposed group (saw ads) and control group. Useful brand lift KPIs include:
- Brand awareness lift – Increase in ad awareness metrics vs. control group.
- Brand favorability lift – Measures increase in brand favorability due to ads.
- Consideration lift – The increase in consideration driven by brand advertising.
- Purchase intent lift – Compares future intent to buy between exposed and control groups.
Cross-Channel KPIs
With omnichannel campaigns, marketers need KPIs that provide an integrated view of performance across channels. Cross-channel KPIs include:
- Cost per thousand (CPM) – Compares cost efficiency across channels.
- ROI by channel – Calculates ROI for each channel or platform.
- Attribution modeling – Attributes conversion value to each interaction across channels.
- Channel assist rate – Measures influence each channel has on conversions.
Paid Social Advertising KPIs
For paid social campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn, these are some of the top performance KPIs:
- Cost per click (CPC) – Compares social ad spend to clicks.
- Click-through rate (CTR) – Measures social ad CTR compared to industry benchmarks.
- Engagement rate – Calculates likes, comments, shares and other engagement as a % of reach.
- Sentiment – Analyzes comments and reactions driven by social ads.
- Conversions by placement – Tracks conversions for each social ad placement.
- CPC by audience – Compares CPC across segmented audiences.
Search Engine Marketing KPIs
For SEM campaigns like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads or Amazon Ads, important KPIs include:
- Click-through rate (CTR) – Compares clicks to impressions for search ads.
- Quality score – Google’s measure of ad relevance to searchers and landing page.
- Average position – Tracks average ad position in search results.
- Impression share – Monitors search ad exposure compared to maximum potential.
- Top IS lost to rank – Highlights when rank is limiting impression share.
- Exact match IS – Measures impressions for exact keyword searches.
Display & Retargeting Advertising KPIs
For display, video and retargeting campaigns, focus on these KPIs:
- Click-through rate (CTR) – Click ratio for display and video ads.
- View rate for video – Percentage of viewed video ads out of impressions.
- View time per video – Average time users engage with video content.
- Frequency – How often each user sees retargeted ads on average.
- CPC or CPV – Assess cost efficiency for display/video ads.
- Retargeting CPA – Purchase conversion rate for users exposed to retargeted ads.
Offline Advertising KPIs
For traditional advertising channels like print, radio and TV, consider these KPIs:
- CPM – Cost to reach 1,000 people with print or broadcast ads.
- Share of voice – Your ad spending as a percentage of the total market.
- Reach – Total number of people exposed to the advertising.
- Frequency – Average number of times audience reached.
- Gross rating points (GRPs) – Measures reach and frequency together for TV ads.
- Insertion rate – Metrics for ad placements, like newspaper circulation.
Choosing the Right Advertising KPIs
The most meaningful KPIs for your advertising depend on campaign objectives, channels used and business context. Here are some best practices for identifying the right KPIs:
- Align KPIs with business and campaign goals – Focus on KPIs that map to desired outcomes.
- Limit KPIs to the most vital metrics – Tracking too many KPIs creates noise.
- Calculate KPIs consistently over time – Ensure metrics are measured the same way.
- Segment KPIs by audience, channel, ad type etc. – Isolate key performance factors.
- Compare KPIs to past performance and benchmarks – Contextualize results.
- Analyze trends and optimize based on KPI insights – Act on what the data tells you.
KPI Dashboard
A KPI dashboard provides a centralized view of advertising performance metrics. Here is an example KPI dashboard displaying important advertising metrics across channels:
| KPI | Search Ads | Social Media Ads | Display Ads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Impressions | 1,200,000 | 800,000 | 600,000 |
| Clicks | 18,000 | 12,000 | 9,000 |
| CTR | 1.5% | 1.8% | 1.2% |
| CPC | $2.50 | $3.00 | $2.25 |
| Conversions | 1,200 | 600 | 300 |
| CPA | $25.00 | $35.00 | $28.00 |
Dashboard KPI analysis might reveal opportunities like lowering CPAs by optimizing search ads for more commercial keywords. Regularly monitoring a balanced set of KPIs enables data-driven optimization and decision making.
Conclusion
Defining the right advertising KPIs to track provides focus for campaign management and performance improvement. Brand awareness, engagement, conversions, brand lift and cross-channel metrics each contribute unique insights. Marketers should identify primary KPIs that connect to overarching goals and offer visibility into what’s working across the customer journey. With a clear understanding of key metrics and performance benchmarks, advertisers can make informed optimizations that amplify results.