Nielsen released a new product for measuring online ad campaigns in Canada at Facebook Canada‘s Toronto summit on Wednesday.
Launched last year in the U.S., Online Campaigns Ratings is part of an ongoing effort to link marketing dollars spent on social media and online advertising to business results, which has long been a pain point for digital marketers.
Terrie Brennan, executive vice president and general manager of advertiser solutions at Nielsen, explained the tool works by tracking Nielsen tags marketers include in digital campaigns. Using this data, Nielsen tracks which users have seen campaigns, then draws links from the ads to increases in purchasing and brand affinity.
Nielsen’s data can also be paired with data from media companies like Facebook to offer greater insights to advertisers looking to tweak campaigns in real time according to their performance.
Showing ROI is critical for Facebook as it fights for a greater share of ad budgets and looks to prove it can push product to advertisers. Jordan Banks, president of Facebook Canada, said measurement is, along with mobile, one of two areas the company chose to focus on in 2013.
“It’s clear social is not a strategy. The number of fans you have is interesting, but it’s only interesting in how it relates to accomplishing a business objective,” Banks said. “One of the themes of 2013 [for Facebook] is noting that social is important, but things like reach, frequency and conversion are way more important.”
Banks said brands have tested Facebook and seen data that marketing on the platform works, but to scale up to mass campaigns and go “TV big” in an ad spend, he said marketers need more sophisticated measurement and concrete proof campaigns push the needle on objectives.
“What we’re trying to do on the brand side is show brand lift and, on the DR side, to show attribution and conversion,” he said. “To the extent we get really good at that we’ll have more comfort in the marketplace and get a greater share of budget.”
In the U.S. Facebook also partners with Datalogix to link in-store purchases at brick and mortar locations to Facebook campaigns. While Facebook Canada does not yet work with a retail measurement partner in this way in Canada, Banks said retailers like Sport Chek are currently running similar programs, drawing links between in-store sales data and Facebook campaigns.
Using Sport Chek’s data, along with data from Facebook, the retailer is able to track consumers who have seen its digital flyer on Facebook from viewing to the point of purchase.
