Advertising Metrics
 the buzz generated through comments,
A metric, simply put, is a quantified
measurement of something. Something that
helps you evaluate the success or failure of your
ad campaign.
Metrics vs. Analytics
Whereas metrics are a quantification of things
you are interested in as a small business.
Analytics are the calculations involving your
metrics and they provide a greater context for
your metrics.
Marketing Objectives
First, advertising objectives must fall under the
overall marketing objectives. If you remember
from the previous lecture, advertising is one of
the Four Ps of Marketing, so logically your
advertising goals must be aligned with your
marketing goals.
 For instance, if your marketing goal is to
increase the sales by 4%, then all your
advertising goals should work toward
supporting that overall goal.
Now, let’s look at some examples of specific
advertising goals that small businesses could set
for their campaigns: (1) increase awareness, (2)
change attitudes and beliefs, (3) change
behavior or behavioral intentions, and (4) to
increase sales.
 So, sales traditionally is a marketing
goal rather than an advertising goal.
HOW DO YOU THEN MEASURE SUCCESS
FOR EACH OF THESE GOALS?
How do you measure awareness?
The total number of unique individuals who are
exposed to your ad campaign is called reach.
In an online or digital environment, awareness
can be measured using a wide variety of
measures like the:
 volume of content generated by users
on social media,
 actual number of impressions generated
by the ad,
 page views,
 actual time spent engaging with the ad,
 or second-degree reach through pass-
alongs or retweets.
How do you measure attitude changes?
Attitude changes can be measured using a host
of metrics such as:
 the number of likes or favorites received,
mentions and social media chatter and
the sentiment of such buzz (whether it’s
overall positive or negative and how
does it shift over time?),
 increase in followers, fans and other
ways of measuring the popularity of the
ad campaign through user engagement
with the ads.
How do you measure behavioral changes
and intentions?
Since digital media are interactive in nature,
actual user behavior or any indicators of it can
be measured easily through metrics such as
click-through-rates (CTRs), downloads,
registrations, subscriptions, purchase
considerations (like when a consumer puts an
item in the shopping cart online), website visits
and leads generated, and actual purchases.
 Actual purchases can also be used to
measure sales in addition to metrics like
revenue generated, changes to market
share and customer lifetime values.
How do you measure sales?
In the advertising world, the number of sales that
can be attributed to an ad are called either
conversions of actions.
Without specific business goals, metrics are
meaningless. As a small business, your overall
goals and objectives are what provide a context
and meaning to the metrics you measure. When
a metric is central to your organization’s goals,
objectives, and overall wellbeing, it is considered
a Key Performance Indicator (KPI).
For something to be a KPI, it must indicate how
well your organization’s goals are being met.
Therefore, the problem with metrics is not how
well they’re measured or how exhaustive they
are, but it is how well they are connected to your
overall goals.
If we have three recommendations for those who
are getting started in digital advertising:
 Know your metrics.
 Choose the best metric to match your
objective.
 Have a system and plan in place that
allows you to measure your metric.
 Be critical of the results. Was the result
worth the spend?
 Benchmark your metrics against
commonly held ones for your industry. Is
it realistic to believe you could be doing
better?