The Power of Programmatic: Set up Campaigns for Success with Key Performance Indicators

We’ve taken a deep dive into the world of programmatic, touching on the landscape, the technology, tactics and targeting. Now, we’re going to dig into campaign objectives and Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. Objectives and KPIs go hand in hand. An objective is what you’re looking to measure as the success of a campaign, and a KPI is a quantifiable measurement used to measure if that campaign objective has been met or not.

There are 3 primary objectives of any digital advertising initiative:

Awareness

Awareness is also referenced as branding or reach, and this objective is based on the desire to get your ad/product/service in front of as many unique viewers as possible. Awareness objective campaigns aim to place your messaging in front of your consumers to make a defined difference in their perception, making the consumer ‘aware’ of your brand! In a traditional marketing funnel, awareness lives at the top, casting the widest net.

Engagement / Traffic Driving

Campaigns with Engagement objectives encourage your consumer to interact with your brand. This interaction typically comes in the form of a click on an ad.

Conversion / Consumer Action

Conversion or Consumer Action campaigns aim to drive potential customers to take a specific action that you are measuring. This can vary from driving consumers to sign up for your newsletter, to a lead, or even a sale on a website.

Translating Objectives into Measurable KPIs

Once Objectives of your campaign or tactic have been identified, they can be translated into Measurable KPIs. These KPIs are quantifiable metrics that will be monitored throughout campaign delivery. Your buyers and agency partners will make optimizations throughout the campaign in order to ensure these KPIs are achieved. Below are some measurable KPIs by objective:

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Objective: Awareness

Measurable KPIs:

· Impressions: number of times your ad was viewed

· Video Completion rate (VCR): The % of eyeballs that viewed your video ad in its entirety compared to those that only viewed partially

· Reach: number of eyeballs that viewed your ad

Objective: Engagement/Traffic

Measurable KPIs:

· Effective Cost Per Click (eCPC): measures the efficiency behind your budget and the volume of clicks your campaign is garnering

· Click Through Rate (CTR): How many times your ad was clicked on

Objective: Consumer Action

Measurable KPIs:

· Effective Cost Per Activity (eCPA): The cost associated with each individual action taken by consumers once they’ve viewed your ad

· Conversions: These dive a bit deeper than simple clicks and are a great lower funnel metric to track if your campaign is focused on driving efficient consumer action.

- Conversions can utilize a tracking pixel that is placed on the desired end destination/click thru URL of an ad. A pixel will monitor and measure consumers who were served your ads and then ended up at the desired end destination – even if that didn’t happen right away from a direct click on the ad.

Set Yourself Up for Success!

Setting programmatic campaigns up for success begins with laying out objectives and translating those into measurable KPIs. Once KPIs are identified, you can look to industry standard benchmarks to ensure your campaigns are performing on par, and you can also set up brand level benchmarks to ensure that you’re always improving on your own success!

Hang in there with me for our next blog as we dive deeper into the benefits of programmatic! We’ll discuss the advantages to continuity in targeting, holistic frequency across digital tactics, reach reporting, and true lift measurement!