Tracking only CTRs can leave you questioning your ad campaign’s success. But with the right display ad KPIs, it’s not guesswork, but an informed strategy.
The consumer journey has become more complex than ever. With prospects exposed to multiple touchpoints and channels, it has become taxing to track their behavior.
Here, display ads become quite an effective means to grasp prospects’ digital footprints more precisely than before. And estimate how ad exposure influences online consumer behavior.
Consumers exposed to display ads show a higher propensity towards active search. It means they’re more likely to actively put in effort to search for a solution or brand.
This shift in behavior underscores a latent impact of display ads, one that moves beyond immediate clicks. It shows how even passive exposure can nudge customers, influencing their intent.
But traditional models struggle to capture this nuanced effect. And focusing primarily on CTRs introduces doubts about whether your display ads are truly effective.
The solution? A framework that doesn’t prioritize just measuring surface-level performance metrics like CTRs.
This is where tracking display ad KPIs and metrics becomes crucial.
Why Is Measuring Display Advertising Metrics and KPIs Crucial?
The digital environment today is unbarred, and your display campaigns are outwardly visible. With the right KPIs and metrics, you can precisely measure display performance.
Clicks don’t offer an accurate picture- Users who click on ads are as likely to convert as those who don’t.
While CTRs represent a tangible action, they don’t highlight how these translate into brand recall, recognition, or awareness. Or even sales.
The overall purpose of display advertising is to drive your campaign goals, whether it’s awareness or revenue. But clicks on their own don’t equate to influence or impact that can help you reach the said goals. Those who click on display ads are as likely to be influenced by them as those who merely view them.
On the other hand, even the savviest marketers end up prioritizing campaign ROI as the principal metric.
However, the impact of the display ads isn’t just visible across the bottom funnel. It also impacts the awareness and consideration stages. And that, in turn, can result in a purchase.
Clicks and conversion- they are just two pieces of the display ad puzzle.
It’s the exposure that’s ultimately imperative.
Don’t merely jump on the market bandwagon or ride trends. The KPIs and metrics you must measure boil down to your campaign goals and what suits your business. Not all metrics and KPIs are equal.
While all KPIs can be key metrics to measure your ad effectiveness, not all metrics can be KPIs.
Display ad metrics to monitor and KPIs to measure, especially for a deeper dive into how your display ads influence consumer behavior, where do you start?
Display Ad Metrics to Focus on to Amp Up Your Campaign
You have to gauge how well your ad campaign is targeting the right audience. This will help you understand where the wins and the lags are. And tweak your display ads strategy accordingly.
Measuring the relevant KPIs won’t just outline the correct placements, but also help revamp your creatives. It’s not just about conversion, but guiding prospects down the funnel. This includes lead-gen efforts, increasing web traffic, retargeting, and nurturing.
So, your display ads metrics should focus on each stage of the marketing funnel.
Let’s spotlight the display advertising KPIs you must spotlight, especially to understand ad effectiveness across different stages.
1. Cost Per Click (CPC)
Cost-per-click outlines the total number of users that engage with your ad and the overall cost-efficiency of your ad campaigns. It’s the cost paid by a brand every time someone clicks their ad.
Cost-per-click helps outline your marketing budget accordingly and ensures that your ad spend translates clicks into potential purchases. This is why it’s widely used in the PPC model.
Your brand agrees to pay a preset amount to the chosen ad network every time a user clicks on the ad that’s been published. The amount is dependent on keywords, bidding strategy, and quality scores.
2. Ad Frequency
Ad frequency equates to the average number of times a browser encounters your ad. Monitoring this helps you keep track of whether users even notice the ads or if you are overexposing them.
Ad frequency helps avoid both extremes.
You must avoid overexposing the same ad to the audience. This could easily trigger ad saturation and damage your brand’s perception.
Ad fatigue is the chief cause of low engagement. So, you must ensure that your ad reaches the relevant audience at the right time.
3. Cost Per Impression
Cost per mile (CPM) or cost per thousand impressions is another significant display ad metric to track. It allows you to calculate the average cost of a thousand ad impressions on channels such as Facebook and Twitter.
This way, CPM allows you to measure and compare the performance of ads across different platforms and channels. And of multiple ad campaigns for accurate assessment.
Think that you’re running two different ad campaigns across Instagram and Facebook. The analysis showcases that the CPM for Instagram is less than that of Facebook.
This ultimately means that you are spending less on Instagram to reach those thousand people.
CPM can be measured through several ad manager tools. But it’s also easy to calculate manually:
⇒ CPM = (cost/impressions) * 1000
4. Ad Impression
Ad impressions don’t equate to how many times a user perceives your ad. But the number of times it has been displayed on a webpage. This metric is tricky to understand.
Ad impressions help you gauge your campaign’s reach and the potential number of customers who are exposed to it. But only when used correctly.
For example, a higher number of impressions signifies elevated reach. This is a considerable display advertising metric to track, especially for optimizing your brand visibility.
But ad impressions should align with other metrics. On its own, it merely outlines how many times your ad is seen. But overlooks engagement.
So, it should be aligned with conversion rates and engagement metrics to understand the ad’s actual effectiveness.
5. View-through Conversions
There might be several such conversions from users who don’t click on the ad but actively see it.
It follows an essential truth: No one enjoys clicking on random ads, hesitating about whether the click downloads a virus onto their device. But that doesn’t mean ads don’t influence conversions.
You should attempt to assess how many prospects take the next step after visiting your website and are served an ad. The reality is that your ad could directly influence the prospect to visit your brand website or use the search engine to research further.
This is why view-through conversions should matter- it inspires active brand search.
It also provides an accurate insight into your display ad’s performance.
6. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
The amount spent to acquire new customers is a crucial display ads metric. And highlights the efficiency of your display advertising efforts.
For a genuine understanding of CPA, divide the total campaign spend by the total number of customers. For example, your total ROI is $15,00, and the total number of customers acquired in that period is 30. The CPA would be $50.
So, if each customer generates $70 in revenue for you, then your campaign is profitable.
This is how CAC assists you in keeping track of your ad’s performance across the entire funnel. It also spotlights how efficient your teams are at closing and retaining customers.
Bonus Display Advertising Metrics to Keep in Mind
- Bounce rate: Track how many customers drop off after viewing only one page. Because it indicates how well your ads, as well as the landing page, engage web visitors.
- Viewability: Measure the impressions seen by users. An ad is viewable only when 50% of your online display ad is visible in the browser window for at least one second.
- Engagement rate: Calculate the interaction your ad receives from the target audience. And also how actively your audience interacts with the rest of your posts and campaigns. This could be the number of likes, shares, or comments.
A high engagement rate equates to magnified resonance with your audience throughout the brand.
Additional Factors to Consider Before Deciding on Your Display Ad KPIs
What should you primarily focus on?
Pay attention to metrics that truly align with your campaign objectives. Just because they are listed as essential doesn’t mean they are relevant to your brand objectives. What you’re trying to achieve and how you’re hoping to achieve it are two disparate motives.
What is your campaign goal? Is there a benchmark?
After identifying the display advertising metrics you’ll prioritize, set a benchmark or a goal- what are you trying to achieve with your campaigns?
Your display ad KPIs should be directed, not free-floating. Once this element has been set, you’ll know how hard you must push yourself and in which direction.
Do you have the tools to measure your progress?
If your goal is to track sales, then there must be systems in place to help you track your sales volume. The same applies to brand awareness. If that’s your objective, then you must develop frameworks that gauge impressions, website traffic, and social mentions to help illustrate the progress of your campaign.
Your teams must possess the right tools and resources to spotlight the required KPIs.
Tweak your display ads campaign.
Your campaigns might not always perform as you want. First, implement the see-what-sticks formula.
But it’s not a done-and-forget approach.
Once you outline what’s working and what’s not, you must tweak your campaigns. Rethink where it’s underperforming. Tweak your CTAs, check your targeting tactics, recreate your creatives, and repurpose content.
Here, testing goes a long way. Continue testing your assets and strategies, and periodically optimize them.
Tracking display ad KPIs is an iterative process.
Display ads influence customers across different stages, from awareness to conversion.
How do you gauge their impact across each touchpoint?
Traditional display ad metrics, such as CTRs and conversion rates, only scratch the surface. Improving your display ad performance demands more from modern advertising.
So, dive into more nuanced KPIs, such as ad frequency, CPA, or view-through conversions. They aim to offer you an accurate picture of your display ad campaigns.
And ascertains that you aren’t stuck riding the coattails of a new trend or focusing on generic metrics. But you’re streamlining the relevant display advertising KPIs with your business goals.
The bottom line is prioritizing what truly matters.
Leverage the correct data and let it guide your decisions from there.
With the relevant display ad metrics and KPIs, you don’t just measure for the sake of measuring. But with a particular purpose and impact in mind.
