Brand lift study: How to measure the true impact of your campaigns

Every marketer asks the same critical question: "Is my advertising really working?". Beyond clicks and impressions, understanding true campaign impact on consumer awareness, recall, and consideration is essential. Brand lift studies provide exactly this clarity, clearly demonstrating advertising effectiveness and enabling marketers to optimize their efforts for measurable results. Sounds like a win? Let’s dig in. 

What is brand lift?

Brand lift measures the increase in consumer awareness, recall, consideration, or overall favorability toward a brand resulting directly from advertising. It moves beyond superficial metrics, capturing the meaningful shifts in how consumers perceive your brand and products, clearly demonstrating your campaign's true effectiveness.

What is a brand lift study and why do you need one?

A brand lift study systematically evaluates the impact of advertising by comparing consumers who have seen your campaign with those who have not. By isolating your advertising’s direct influence, brand lift studies provide clear evidence of campaign effectiveness, helping marketers justify budgets, refine messaging, and maximize their strategic impact.

Why measuring brand lift is challenging (and how to solve it)

Measuring brand lift is certainly no walk in the park. Doing it accurately can be challenging due to factors like competitor activities, shifting market trends, or external events. To clearly isolate your campaign’s true impact, brand lift studies require robust methodologies, statistically significant sample sizes, and clear benchmarks. (It helps to have an expert like GWI on hand to help, too.) This rigorous approach ensures you clearly understand how your campaign moves consumer perceptions.

Key metrics to track in a brand lift study

Brand lift studies typically measure these critical metrics:

• Brand awareness: Consumer recognition of your brand after campaign exposure.
  
  
• Ad recall: Consumers’ ability to clearly remember seeing your advertisement.
  
  
• Brand consideration: Increased consumer willingness to engage or purchase your brand.
  
  
• Favorability and perception: Improved attitudes and positive associations with your brand.
  
  

Tracking these metrics provides clear, actionable insights into your campaign's impact.

How brand lift studies work: Methodology explained

Brand lift studies follow a clear, structured methodology. They compare clearly defined groups: those who were exposed to your advertising, and a carefully selected control group that wasn't. Pre- and post-campaign surveys measure shifts in awareness, recall, consideration, and favorability. This structured comparison clearly demonstrates whether changes in consumer attitudes result directly from your advertising efforts, i.e. if your ads had the desired effect. 

Using GWI to measure and optimize brand lift

GWI helps advertisers take brand lift measurement further by offering powerful tools like GWI AdFX, combined with deep consumer insights. This combination provides not only clear measurement but also detailed context, enhancing overall strategic effectiveness.

GWI AdFX: Reliable brand lift measurement

GWI AdFX measures brand lift by clearly comparing groups exposed to your digital campaigns with matched control groups. It uses advanced methodologies including controlled exposure and pre/post-campaign surveys, providing robust insights into core brand metrics such as awareness, ad recall, brand consideration, purchase intent, and favorability.

With global coverage across over 50 markets, GWI AdFX delivers statistically significant results quickly, enabling marketers to respond in real-time to optimize campaigns effectively. 

Moreover, GWI AdFX includes unique capabilities such as implicit association testing and facial coding. These methods offer deeper understanding of subconscious and emotional responses to advertising, clearly revealing not only campaign performance but the underlying reasons for their success. This deeper insight empowers smarter strategic decisions, enhancing the overall impact of advertising. Pretty neat, right?

Global scale, fast results

GWI’s global reach ensures advertisers quickly receive reliable, statistically significant results. This timely data is especially valuable for multi-market or DMA-targeted campaigns, providing clear, actionable insights at scale.

Understanding the why behind brand lift

GWI provides detailed consumer insights through our Core and USA datasets, clearly illuminating consumer values, attitudes, and behaviors. This comprehensive understanding allows advertisers to interpret brand lift results in the full context of consumer mindsets, resulting in more effective marketing strategies.

Integration for better results

Advertisers can seamlessly integrate GWI brand lift insights into their strategies. By aligning study audiences with established segments or creating new ones using GWI Core, USA, or Spark data, advertisers can enhance their retargeting strategies, refine creative executions, and optimize ongoing campaign efforts.

When should you conduct a brand lift study?

So, how do you know the time is right? Brand lift studies deliver clear value in the following scenarios:

• Pre/post campaign testing: Measure campaign effectiveness before scaling your investment.
  
  
• Creative and messaging validation: Confirm whether your creative resonates clearly with target audiences.
  
  
• Media mix optimization: Identify which media channels deliver the strongest impact to optimize spend.
  
  
• Client and stakeholder reporting: Provide clear, credible evidence demonstrating advertising ROI.
  
  

These scenarios help marketers clearly identify when brand lift studies provide the greatest strategic value.

Real-world use cases: Brand lift studies in action

Tequila Avión needed help standing out. Here's how their agency, Fullsix, devised a data-driven campaign that achieved brand lift across their benchmarks.

Their agency, Fullsix, used GWI to conduct analysis to understand the audiences’ lifestyles, interests, behaviors and touchpoints. This gave them a detailed audience model to leverage across all media, offline and online. Not only did their online optimization drive 8% more efficient reach than industry benchmarks, their data-driven TV buy was 30% more efficient than traditional campaigns.

But that’s not all. Beyond measuring efficiency, the team used GWIQ analytics to analyze the overall effectiveness of their campaign on the exact same audience they used for their original modeling.

This meant they could get an accurate reading of what actually worked, and equally, what didn’t.

Revealing a brand lift across all key brand objectives, the team reached their desired goals against the odds, increasing both brand awareness and consideration among their target audience.

"In the case of Avión, the people we planned against were the people we measured against. This helped us close the loop and put us in a very strong position to iterate with the brand towards ever better results in the future.” - Seinn Schlidt, Director of Strategy at Fullsix. 

Read the full Tequila Avión case study. 

Best practices for conducting a successful brand lift study

To ensure your brand lift study clearly provides actionable insights, follow these best practices:

Define objectives and metrics

Clearly set your campaign goals, whether it’s awareness, recall, consideration, or favorability, to ensure your brand lift study directly informs your strategic decisions.

Ensure sufficient sample size and control

Employ robust control groups and statistically significant samples to ensure clear, reliable, and accurate results. This rigor ensures insights reflect your true campaign impact.

Contextualize results with consumer insights

Combine brand lift results with comprehensive consumer insights from GWI. Understanding deeper consumer motivations and attitudes helps translate data into actionable strategic insights rather than isolated metrics.

Final takeaway: Brand lift studies - your key to advertising effectiveness

Brand lift studies are essential for clearly demonstrating advertising effectiveness and justifying marketing investments. Leveraging tools like GWI AdFX, advertisers gain reliable measurement and comprehensive insights into consumer behavior, clearly enhancing strategic decisions. In a competitive landscape, understanding brand lift ensures marketers not only measure but optimize their advertising for clear, measurable results.

Frequently asked questions about brand lift studies

What is a brand lift study?

A brand lift study measures advertising impact on consumer attitudes, such as awareness, recall, consideration, and favorability, by comparing exposed and control groups.

Why is brand lift important?

Brand lift quantifies real-world advertising effectiveness, helping marketers clearly demonstrate ROI, optimize strategies, and understand consumer responses.

How is brand lift measured?

Brand lift studies typically use pre- and post-campaign surveys, clearly comparing exposed audiences with control groups to measure changes in key metrics like awareness, recall, and favorability.

Need a helping hand? Leave the heavy lifting to our team of experts. Find out more about our advertising effectiveness and brand tracking services.