How To Measure Display Ads Campaign

In this article, I will be looking at how one can measure Display and Video ads campaign by the organisation. The guide presented here will allow you to get more out of your Display and Video ads campaigns. There are a number of metrics available to see if your Display campaign is successful or not. These include:

Impressions: An impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a Google partner website or on YouTube
Clicks: A click is counted every time someone clicks on your ad
Click through Rate (CTR): CTR is the rate of how many people click on your ad after seeing it. It is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions. The CTR is a good indication of how relevant your ad is to your audience and how well your campaign is performing. CTR = Clicks/impressions
Cost per Click (CPC): How much the click on your ad has cost you is the CPC
Viewable Cost Per thousand impressions (vCPM): On the Google Display Network you can choose to pay per click or viewable cost per thousand impressions – vCPM. The vCPM is the cost per thousand impressions for your keyword or ad
Conversions: A conversion is any action that someone takes on your website that you deem valuable to your business. This can be a purchase, a download, the filling in of a contact form, looking at a particular web page, viewing a video and/or calling you. You can track these conversions with “conversion tracking” where you set which actions are valuable to you and track these.
Conversion rate: The conversion rate is the average number of conversions per ad click, shown as a percentage. The rate is calculated by taking the number of conversions and dividing that by the number of clicks on the same period. Conversion rate = Conversions/clicks
View-through conversions: This is recorded when a user sees your ad in the display network but does not click it, yet later converts through another medium such as organic search, clicking on a search ad, going to your website directly or any other source.
Reach and Frequency report: Knowing how many people have seen your ad (reach) and how often (frequency) is your reach and frequency report.

There are similar metrics available for Video campaigns, with some dedicated metrics for this format:

Impressions: Recorded when the ad is served for five seconds or more (In-Stream) or the ad appears in the search results page (Discovery)
Views: Recorded when a user watches 30 seconds or more, or the full video (whichever comes first) on an In-Stream ad
View Rate: The number of views expressed as a percentage of the number of impressions
Clicks: Recorded when a user clicks on your website, the Companion Banner, a YouTube Card, or the link to your app
Cost Per View (CPV): The bidding mechanism used for Trueview ads where the advertiser is charged once a view or click is recorded – whichever comes first. Your CPV is an aggregate of both Views and Clicks, and you are only charged once per ad for an interaction (view or click) – whichever comes first
CPM: The bidding mechanism used for Bumper Ads that allows the advertiser to pay every time a thousand impressions are delivered

Video Played to 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%: Analyze what percentage of viewers watched to each point of the video. It may help to identify if there is a drop-off early in the video and if users are engaged or not.

You can report on Display campaign performance by utilizing pre-defined Display reports for Audience and Topic:

1.Navigate to the reporting tab at the top right of the AdWords interface

2.Select Predefined reports (formerly Dimensions)

3.Select Display Topic/Audience

4.Filter reports by Campaign/AdGroup or any of your metrics

5.Adjust date range or change chart type between table/line/bar chart and custom

You can analyze performance within the AdWords interface with custom combinations of columns, targeting and ads tabs.

Add columns to review the performance of your Display campaigns:

Performance: Impressions, clicks, cpm, cost
Viewability: Viewable impressions, avg. viewable cpm, viewable rate.
Conversions: Conversions, cross-device conversions, view-through-conversion.
Competitive metrics: Display impression share lost budget/rank
Attributes: Campaign type, bid strategy type, bid adjustment, targeting setting

You can review these metrics in the interface, or download them to review offline.

You can report on video campaign performance in Google AdWords by utilizing pre-defined column sets.

To see these additional columns, change the column view within the AdWords interface:

1.Click Modify columns on the “Columns” drop-down menu. Whatever you unselect will be hidden the next time you sign in to your AdWords account.

2. When you select “Video campaigns” on the campaign type drop-down menu, you’ll see the following predefined types of columns:

Views: Use these columns to monitor your video views and audience engagement.
Audience: These metrics help you track the growth of your YouTube audience.
Branding: Use these metrics to see how well your video ads are building brand awareness.
Conversions: These metrics help you analyze clicks and conversions on your website.
Reach metrics: Use these metrics to better understand how many people were shown your ads.

Similar to Display campaigns, you can also modify the columns you view in the AdWords interface for more specific metrics and detailed reports.

There are a number of added metrics available against which you can review your campaigns:

Earned Views: The number of organic views accrued by your video(s) following exposure to the paid video ad.
Earned Subscribers: The number of subscribers gained by your channel following exposure to the paid video ad.
Earned Shares: The number of shares of your video(s) following exposure to the paid video ad.
Earned Likes: The number of organic likes of your video(s) following exposure to the paid video ad.
View %: What percentage of the video users watched.

Each targeting method will display performance metrics within the AdWords interface as you navigate between them to review each criteria and how it is contributing to your overall campaign performance.

Use the AdWords Video Targeting reports to analyze the performance of specific targeting methods against your campaign KPIs.
Use the AdWords Videos reports and the Ads tabs to see how your individual video ads performed against campaign KPIs, and compare ad formats.
Use the Settings tab to view reports on Device, Location and Language performance for your Video campaigns.

You can use Google Analytics to analyze the follow-on effect of your ads: the extent to which users engage with your site after they click your ads, and how they convert.

In Google Analytics, you can use the specific AdWords Display Targeting report to analyze the performance of your AdWords campaigns that target the GDN. This report allows you to understand the follow-on effect of your display ads: the extent to which users engage with your site after they click your ads, and how they convert.

The report includes data from Display Network only and Search Network with Display Select campaigns that use one or more of the available targeting options:

Display Keywords
Placements
Topics
Interests and Remarketing
Age
Gender

how to measure display ads

Use the Google Ads Video Campaigns report within Google Analytics to analyze the performance of your video ad campaigns. You can pull reports on:

Video ads
Device
Geography
Location
Operating system
Browser
Video campaign performance

Access display and video reports in Google Analytics to understand the importance of display and video campaign performance in the context of your overall website KPIs:

Select a metric-group that matches your KPIs using the Explorer tab, e.g. Site Usage, Website Clicks, and Engagement.
Choose dimensions to analyze, such as Ad Content or Video.
Add Secondary Dimensions such as Device Category.
Sort tables by your most important metrics, for example, ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).

After you run reports on your display campaign performance, you then need to assess the performance against your business goals/ the KPIs you set – reach, engagement, remarketing, etc.

You can optimize your display campaigns to ensure you reach the goals you set by:

Rotating your creative and testing new messaging
Testing new targeting options with observations
Adjusting your bids accordingly in line with performance. As with a search campaign, check that the locations and devices that you are targeting are receiving the clicks that they need. Remember that a more densely populated location will be more competitive for CPC or vCPM and will usually require a higher bid. It is good practice to make bid adjustments on locations and devices that you are getting more traffic (impressions) in and a lower CTR.
Monitoring your daily budget:
Reduce CPM/CPC bids on poor performers, or to increase reach
Increase CPM/CPC bids on top performers
Amend targeting to improve CPM or CTR
Restrict your targeting to limit your audiences or when budgets are being reached early in the day
Adjust ad scheduling, delivery and frequency capping to control budget utilization and increase reach or maximize exposure.

Likewise, after you run reports on your video campaign performance, assess the performance against your business goals, and judge whether your investment is generating a return.

Optimize campaigns by the metrics used to set KPIs:

Views
Engagement (View-through rate)
Reach
Frequency
Traffic

Optimize campaigns by using the same processes that are implemented to optimize all PPC campaigns, including:

Reducing CPV bids on poor performers, or to increase reach
Increasing CPV bids on top performers
Amending targeting to improve view-through rates or CPVs
Expanding your targeting to reach new audiences
Expanding/restricting targeting to meet daily budgets
Adjusting ad scheduling, delivery and frequency capping to control budget utilization and increase reach or maximize exposure.

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