Measuring brand lift: 5 minutes with… Ben Chesters

Q: Is this the first time Hearst UK has used brand measurement? If so, why is now the time to commit to the metric?

A: While we’ve used brand measurement tools in our work, we’ve never done so at this scale. Previously, it’s been a very expensive series of metrics to measure, but the likes of our partner, Brand Metrics, make it accessible.

It’s clear from our conversations with advertisers that they want to invest in our trusted brands, and there’s never been a more important time to demonstrate the power our premium content delivers. The metrics themselves add a whole new level of nuance, colour and understanding of campaign performance — way more so than traditional measurements such as viewability, for example.

Q: What is it about brand measurement that particularly appeals to you as a publisher?

A: Our brands, which include Good Housekeeping, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire and Men’s Health, have spent decades building deep relationships with their audiences, so being able to provide metrics beyond digital performance alone, and incorporating areas including consideration, preference and action intent, is a powerful tool. These metrics provide real insight and a truly holistic idea of a campaign’s performance.

We can really understand if a campaign worked, and why. Obviously, this is especially useful when a campaign doesn’t meet performance expectations because we can optimise towards future success.

Q: What value will brand measurement offer to the agencies and clients you work with?

A: Brand measurement demonstrates the value of every pound spent on every campaign. With budgets tightening across marketing departments everywhere, it is really important we can prove our worth to our partners. Investing in a third-party, independent provider ensures we aren’t marking our own homework.

As we continue to build more direct relationships with our clients and agencies, having the ability to understand which are the best performing ads and pieces of content during the lifecycle of a campaign is extremely valuable. This ensures we’re able to provide ongoing optimisation and it arms us with proof points to help shape future campaigns. We can even mix brand lift data with other datasets to gain extra insights, which allow us to shape the strategic and commercial direction of future work.

An unexpected benefit of measuring brand lift has been the enhanced working relationships with our partner agencies. The new information has brought closer collaboration between our various departments, including planning, research, data and insights teams, as we all work toward delivering fantastic, high-performing ad campaigns.

Q: How will your audiences ultimately benefit from the insights you derive from this?

A: By taking an always-on approach with our partners, our audiences will receive a more personalised experience, where they are served the most engaging and relevant advertising. This is because brand lift data gives us a greater understanding of our audiences, which in turn allows us to monetise them better for our partners.

And the way we measure brand lift data is unobtrusive. It’s panel-free, and the audience is simply served one quick question relating to the content they’re seeing, and that’s it. Minimum inconvenience for the audience, but maximum performance in terms of ad experience.

Q: Is Hearst UK seeing increasing demand from brands and agencies for brand lift measurement insights?

A: This is certainly true for our industry, and it’s a conversation we’ve been driving. Typically, brand lift measurement insights have formed part of large-scale campaigns, where there is a need to warrant spend, but now it’s part of every campaign we run.

The optimisation potential is really attractive for agencies and clients, as is the ability to use brand lift data to build long-term brand equity for advertisers. Over time, this generates greater audience affinity for a brand, resulting in more brand recognition, referrals and repeat purchases. All these increase revenue for a brand in the long and short term.

Q: What’s the next step for Hearst and Brand Metrics after this initial phase?

A: Combining Brand Metrics with AURA, Hearst’s first-party ad targeting tool, and our new Mega Hero ad format, is something we’re excited about exploring. We estimate the new data will be particularly powerful to deliver for our brand and agency partners.

Also published in: InPublishing