What is brand lift study?

A survey that compares people who saw a campaign with people who didn’t, to measure changes in awareness, recall or intent.

A brand lift study splits an audience into people who were shown a campaign and a similar group who weren’t, then asks both a few questions: have you heard of this brand, do you remember the ad, would you consider buying. The difference between the groups is the lift.

The design is sound, and it’s closer to a real test than most brand metrics. Two things to keep in mind. When the platform selling the media also runs the study, it’s measuring its own ads, even if the method is fair. And a lift in what people say doesn’t always become a lift in what they do. The study is strongest when you can check it against sales, tickets, sign-ups or streams afterward.

Why it matters

It’s one of the few measures built for brand work. It measures what people say in a survey, which is a step away from what they buy.

An example

Example (made-up numbers): 30% of people who saw the campaign say they recognize the brand, against 25% of people who didn’t. That’s a 5-point lift in awareness. The next question is whether regions with heavier exposure sold more in the weeks after.

Where it misleads

Reading a lift in awareness or intent as a lift in sales. The two are related, and they’re separate measurements.

How Arcus handles it

We treat a brand lift study as one piece of evidence and line it up with your own numbers for the same period. When the budget riding on it calls for proof, we suggest a test that runs ads in some regions and pauses them in others.

More in our guide: Incrementality, explained without the math