Measure your campaigns with Google Brand Lift on YouTube [case]
Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2025 5:47 am
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How can the success of an online campaign be measured? With YouTube as one of the most important online channels, we used Google Brand Lift to measure the impact on the brand of CM (the largest public health insurer in Belgium). We did this during the 2016 brand campaign of CM.
Unlike CM’s year-round campaigns (where acquiring new leads is the primary conversion goal), we were looking for a way to measure the impact and thus the success of the branding campaigns. Needless to say, we were very excited when Google introduced its Brand Lift surveys and we were finally able to implement them for one of our clients.
If this is the first time you’ve heard about Google Brand Lift and are wondering why it was developed, read this 2015 article on Think With Google and you’ll be set for the rest.
Ok, how does it work?
The basic idea is as simple as it sounds. argentina telegram number list Before you start your survey, Google randomly divides your audience into two groups, namely:
A control group: This is the group of people who will not see your ad on YouTube.
An ad group: This is the group of people who will see your video ad (and who we hope will remember it).
Within about a day of seeing (or not seeing) the ad, both groups are shown a short survey. “Since the only effective difference between the two groups is whether or not they saw your ad, the lift generated for the campaign can be accurately determined,” Google says about Brand Lift . The survey is shown within YouTube in place of another pre-roll ad. There is no obligation to answer the questions. Halfway through our campaign, we already had a survey completion rate of 15 percent.
YouTube Polls
Google checks the impact of the campaigns on your brand on three levels.
Ad recall : Do people remember seeing a CM advertisement?
Brand awareness : is CM (more) top of mind within our so-called advertising group?
Brand interest : is there an increase in search frequency for brand-related search terms?
Ideally, of course, you would see a positive impact on all three levels within the 'ad group'.
First step in setting up Brand Lift: Contact your Google representative
Indeed, you cannot set up the surveys yourself. If you want to use Brand Lift, you will need to enlist the help of the Google sales representative who is handling your account(s). The main reason for this is that Google wants to make sure that everything is implemented and executed correctly.
Since there is a limit of 20K (with a minimum spend of 7K, evenly spread over the first seven days of the campaign), the risk of conducting the surveys incorrectly cannot be taken. Incomplete or incorrect settings will most likely lead to incorrect information and therefore also to an incorrect analysis afterwards. That is why Google takes care of the surveys, taking into account your own input. The advertiser, or in this case us as an agency, take care of the campaigns.
To implement Brand Lift, you will need to enlist the help of the Google sales representative who is managing your account(s).
You can submit your request for using Brand Lift via the Brand Lift booking request. Please note that in the ' general section', point 3, a minimum spend of €1,000 is mentioned for the first fourteen days, but in our case this was set to seven days. Nevertheless, the minimum spend cannot be less than 20k in total. If one of the thresholds is not reached, Google will immediately stop the surveys. So pay close attention to that.
Settings and requirements
So Google handles the survey side of Brand Lift, but you have to take care of setting up and managing the YouTube video campaigns within your AdWords account. It’s not much different than setting up “regular” video campaigns, but there are six things to keep in mind.
New campaigns: It is not possible to use or reuse old campaigns that have been run before. Old data is not allowed in the campaigns.
Set a start date: All video campaigns should have the same scheduled start date and time.
Campaign Status: This must be paused when setting up the campaign. Active campaigns cannot be linked to Brand Lift surveys, even if no data has been generated yet.
Maximum five: a maximum of five campaigns is allowed. In our case at CM, we used three campaigns. One for each theme ('welcome', 'affordable', 'grow with us').
Targeting: Make sure you don't set this too narrowly, so that you can be sure that the minimum spend is reached within seven days.
Video ads: preferably work with just one video ad as a base, so that the same visual message is spread everywhere. If everyone sees the same video ad, the chance of a positive lift for your brand is increased. Because we wanted to optimize the campaigns halfway through the process, we used a variation to see which ad was watched the most.
How can the success of an online campaign be measured? With YouTube as one of the most important online channels, we used Google Brand Lift to measure the impact on the brand of CM (the largest public health insurer in Belgium). We did this during the 2016 brand campaign of CM.
Unlike CM’s year-round campaigns (where acquiring new leads is the primary conversion goal), we were looking for a way to measure the impact and thus the success of the branding campaigns. Needless to say, we were very excited when Google introduced its Brand Lift surveys and we were finally able to implement them for one of our clients.
If this is the first time you’ve heard about Google Brand Lift and are wondering why it was developed, read this 2015 article on Think With Google and you’ll be set for the rest.
Ok, how does it work?
The basic idea is as simple as it sounds. argentina telegram number list Before you start your survey, Google randomly divides your audience into two groups, namely:
A control group: This is the group of people who will not see your ad on YouTube.
An ad group: This is the group of people who will see your video ad (and who we hope will remember it).
Within about a day of seeing (or not seeing) the ad, both groups are shown a short survey. “Since the only effective difference between the two groups is whether or not they saw your ad, the lift generated for the campaign can be accurately determined,” Google says about Brand Lift . The survey is shown within YouTube in place of another pre-roll ad. There is no obligation to answer the questions. Halfway through our campaign, we already had a survey completion rate of 15 percent.
YouTube Polls
Google checks the impact of the campaigns on your brand on three levels.
Ad recall : Do people remember seeing a CM advertisement?
Brand awareness : is CM (more) top of mind within our so-called advertising group?
Brand interest : is there an increase in search frequency for brand-related search terms?
Ideally, of course, you would see a positive impact on all three levels within the 'ad group'.
First step in setting up Brand Lift: Contact your Google representative
Indeed, you cannot set up the surveys yourself. If you want to use Brand Lift, you will need to enlist the help of the Google sales representative who is handling your account(s). The main reason for this is that Google wants to make sure that everything is implemented and executed correctly.
Since there is a limit of 20K (with a minimum spend of 7K, evenly spread over the first seven days of the campaign), the risk of conducting the surveys incorrectly cannot be taken. Incomplete or incorrect settings will most likely lead to incorrect information and therefore also to an incorrect analysis afterwards. That is why Google takes care of the surveys, taking into account your own input. The advertiser, or in this case us as an agency, take care of the campaigns.
To implement Brand Lift, you will need to enlist the help of the Google sales representative who is managing your account(s).
You can submit your request for using Brand Lift via the Brand Lift booking request. Please note that in the ' general section', point 3, a minimum spend of €1,000 is mentioned for the first fourteen days, but in our case this was set to seven days. Nevertheless, the minimum spend cannot be less than 20k in total. If one of the thresholds is not reached, Google will immediately stop the surveys. So pay close attention to that.
Settings and requirements
So Google handles the survey side of Brand Lift, but you have to take care of setting up and managing the YouTube video campaigns within your AdWords account. It’s not much different than setting up “regular” video campaigns, but there are six things to keep in mind.
New campaigns: It is not possible to use or reuse old campaigns that have been run before. Old data is not allowed in the campaigns.
Set a start date: All video campaigns should have the same scheduled start date and time.
Campaign Status: This must be paused when setting up the campaign. Active campaigns cannot be linked to Brand Lift surveys, even if no data has been generated yet.
Maximum five: a maximum of five campaigns is allowed. In our case at CM, we used three campaigns. One for each theme ('welcome', 'affordable', 'grow with us').
Targeting: Make sure you don't set this too narrowly, so that you can be sure that the minimum spend is reached within seven days.
Video ads: preferably work with just one video ad as a base, so that the same visual message is spread everywhere. If everyone sees the same video ad, the chance of a positive lift for your brand is increased. Because we wanted to optimize the campaigns halfway through the process, we used a variation to see which ad was watched the most.