Tag Archives: Business Insights

Falling in Love With Measurement

Why aren't more marketers measuring their campaigns? 


If Marketing and Measurement had a relationship status in today’s mobile-first world, it would be: "It's complicated." They've been sitting at the same table at lunch, there's been some small talk in the hall … but they haven't really gotten comfortable together.

Which is a shame, because these two are perfect for each other.

Connecting the dots 

Consumers often have dozens or even hundreds of digital interactions before they buy something today. The sheer amount of data created is staggering. There are more than enough dots to be connected for full visibility into the customer journey.

But, as much data as marketers collect today, the truth is many still struggle to make sense of it all. In some companies, you could say Marketing and Measurement find themselves sitting at opposite ends of the couch.

Only 5 out of 10 marketers said they think about measurement while developing campaign strategy, a recent survey of marketing decision-makers shows.1 If you don't define your measurement goals from the beginning, you may not collect the right data — and understand what's working and what isn't.

Marketing and Measurement should get cozier sooner: at the front-end of the campaign process, while developing strategy. Yet, too many marketers said they think about measurement while building materials and assets (nearly 16%), after the campaign has deployed (9%), or even after the campaign has finished (nearly 6%). What’s more, 16% of the survey respondents said they don’t measure their campaigns at all.2
Clearly, it's time for a relationship makeover. If you're ready to play matchmaker in your own organization, try starting a strategic conversation between Marketing and Measurement with these three questions:

  1. Are we measuring the consumer interactions that really matter?
  2. How quickly can we spot the key insights hidden in this data?
  3. How do we turn those insights into better customer experiences? 

When we close the gap between Measurement and Marketing, we can not only answer the question “How are we doing?” but also the more important question, “How can we do better?”

Going steady 

It doesn't have to be complicated. When Marketing and Measurement go hand-in-hand throughout the customer journey, it can lead to more useful insights, higher revenues, and better experiences for everybody.

As Matt Lawson, Google's Managing Director of Ads Marketing, says, “Measurement isn’t what happens at the end; it’s where the smarter and more successful future begins.”3


Download “Measuring Marketing Insights,” a collection of Harvard Business Review articles offering best practices and insights on measurement, analytics, and how to turn data into action. 

1-2Source: Google Surveys, "Measurement in Campaign Timeline", Base: 1,092 marketing executives, U.S., August 2016.
3Harvard Business Review, “Rethink Measurement From the Ground Up,” sponsor content from Google Analytics 360 Suite, August 2016.

Posted by Karen Budell, Content Marketing Manager, Google Analytics 360 Suite

How to Apply Holiday Shopping Insights to Your Analytics Strategies

The Year of the Supershopper
We all have that friend — the one who somehow knows the latest brands, the season’s must-have products, and where to find the best deals at the snap of a finger. In years past, this friend was an enigma, making us wonder how does he or she do it?

Today, we can all be that friend. With the ability to instantly discover, research, and purchase, shoppers around the world are more informed and more efficient than ever before - they’ve transformed into supershoppers seemingly overnight.

But what defines supershoppers? And what does this mean for retailers trying to win them over this holiday season? Let’s find out.


They Keep Their Options Open
Last year, more than 50% of holiday shoppers said they were open to purchasing from new retailers1. This is especially true online. More than three-quarters of smartphone shoppers who usually go to the same physical stores when they shop for products are very open to new retailers and brands online2. Why? Mobile makes it easy to explore all of your options no matter when or where you’re shopping. In fact, after searching on Google, 76% of mobile shoppers have changed their mind about which retailer or brand to purchase3.
Mobile is Their Muse
It used to be that shoppers would thumb through catalogues or stare longingly at the holiday window displays, but mobile is now the super shopper’s go-to source for inspiration. Sixty-four percent of smartphone shoppers turn to mobile search for ideas about what to buy before heading into a store4. And 1 in 4 mobile video viewers in the U.S. have visited YouTube for help with a purchase decision while they were at a store or visiting a store's website5.

But shoppers aren’t only making purchase decisions, they’re discovering new brands and products along the way: more than half of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their phones6.

They Want the Best - Not the Cheapest
In July we learned that shoppers are on the quest for the best — and this still rings true more than ever today. Last holiday, mobile searches related to “best gift” grew 70% year over year while mobile searches related to cheap or inexpensive gifts grew about 35%7. They’re also willing to do the research to the make the best decision: on YouTube, mobile watch time for product review videos has grown 60% year over year8.

But supershoppers don’t only want the best - they want personalized, unique, cool gifts. Mobile searches related to “unique gifts” grew more than 65% while mobile searches related to “cool gifts” grew a whopping 80%9.

Mobile is Their Door to the Store
Although more and more people are willing to buy on mobile, we know that mobile is still used predominantly as a door to the store. In fact, 76% of people who search for something nearby on their smartphone visit a related business within a day, and 28% of those searches result in a purchase10.

Once they’re inside your store, they expect the experience to be a seamless one: more than 40% of smartphone shoppers want retailers to automatically surface relevant information such as the location of the item in the store, a special deal or related products11.

They Shop ‘Til they Drop
Supershoppers live up to their name as the holiday season progresses. From November through mid-December we see online conversion rates increase across devices. Last year, on mobile alone, they jumped 30% on Black Friday and 50% on Cyber Monday when compared to November 112.



Tips to Using Analytics to Reach Today’s Shopper
Analytics is a critical marketing tool all year long. But that importance is amplified during the holiday season. Here are five ideas on how you can use analytics to get the most out of the holiday shopping season.

1. Understand which days drive the most sales — be there. In order to develop a successful holiday retail strategy, it’s important to first understand the days that drive the most sales for your business. Once you understand this, you can craft strategy — across mobile, desktop, and tablet — that optimizes your media and promotion not only for these days, but for the entire holiday season.
For example, adjust bids for auction-based media and use the lift in transaction rates over the average transaction rate as your bid multiplier. Use Smart Bidding in AdWords or DoubleClick Search to maximize your performance.

2. Get personal when engaging with window shoppers. The great thing about the holidays is that you can start shopping at any time — and then wait for discounts. Many consumers may already be browsing your site looking for gift ideas. This is an audience that may convert at a higher rate. Use Google Analytics to create remarketing lists including these shoppers, and then customize your marketing campaigns to better suit their needs.

But don’t stop there: Remember, supershoppers crave personalization. Test different variations of your website with this same audience to offer more customized experiences. Try Google Optimize, our free site testing and personalization tool, to get started.

3. Act fast: Create a culture of optimization. Your holiday marketing plans are set long before the holiday season starts. It’s very important to monitor your activities to ensure they’re driving business growth. And if they’re not you need to take action by immediately identifying areas of opportunity and improvement.

Google Analytics offers a number of ways to help simplify reporting, sift through data, and spotlight insights for you. Custom reports, dashboards and shortcuts all let you customize reporting so you spend less time looking for data and more time analyzing important information. Or better yet, try Google Data Studio and create a holiday shopping dashboard for different teams in your organization.

4. Analyze your performance against your competitors. Benchmarking your business against your competitors helps you see the big picture. If you’re a Google Analytics user, you can tailor this analysis and approach, using your own data and the data available in our benchmarking reports. The benefit of using those reports is that they will provide you a comparison between your data and your competitors, using characteristics such as website traffic, country and detailed vertical information.

5. Start developing your New Year marketing strategy. With so many new shoppers entering your stores, sites, and apps, data and analytics are critical to helping you convert first-time shoppers into long-term, loyal customers. Use your website data to create lists of first-time customers during the holidays, and deliver personalized communication across channels to build relationships. With Google Analytics you can create remarketing lists and easily connect with this audience.

Happy analyzing!

Posted by Julie Krueger, Retail Managing Director, Google and Casey Carey, Director of Analytics Marketing, Google


  1. Google/ Ipsos, Post Holiday Shopping Intentions Study - Total Shoppers Report, Jan 2016, Base: US Holiday Shoppers, n=1,500
  2. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000, Same store shoppers = 801
  3. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000
  4. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000
  5. Google-commissioned Ipsos Brand Building on Mobile Survey, U.S., December 2015 n=1000, 18-54 year olds
  6. Google/Ipsos, "Consumers in the Micro-Moment," Wave 3, U.S., n=1291 online smartphone users 18+, August 2015
  7. Source: Google Search Data, Apparel, Home & garden, Beauty & personal care, Computers & electronics, Gifts, Toys & games, Photo & video, Nov-Dec 2014 vs Nov-Dec 2015, United States
  8. YouTube data, U.S., Classification as a “Product Review" video was based on public data such as headlines and tags, and may not account for every such video available on YouTube, Nov - Dec 2014 and Nov - Dec 2015
  9. Google Search Data, Apparel, Home & garden, Beauty & personal care, Computers & electronics, Gifts, Toys & games, Photo & video, Nov-Dec 2014 vs Nov-Dec 2015, United States
  10. Google/Purchased Digital Diary: How Consumers Solve Their Needs in the Moment, May 2016, Representative sample of US Smartphone users = 1000. Local searchers = 634, Purchases = 1,140
  11. Google/Euromonitor International, Micro-Moments Survey, US, July 2016, Smartphone shoppers = 1000
  12. Google Analytics Shopping category data, Nov 1, 2015–December 14, 2015, United States


Spotlight on Data Studio: Beautiful Reports and Collaboration Just Got Easier

We launched Google Data Studio (beta) in the U.S. earlier this year, and last week, we expanded availability to 21 additional countries.* We’re excited to offer Data Studio to companies across the globe so they can easily create and share reports and dashboards, and ultimately use insights and collaboration to make better business decisions.

Organizations today collect an increasingly large amount of data. In a world of web analytics, CRM systems, and third-party sources, data-driven decisions should be easier than ever before. However, all of this data has presented a significant challenge: making it easily accessible and useful.

Having multiple data sources that live in silos within your organization compromises your ability to spot critical business opportunities and issues when they matter most. This is a widespread challenge, with 84% of marketers saying they don’t believe their data sources are well-integrated, according to a 2016 Forrester study.

Data Studio solves this problem by allowing you to easily connect your data and create beautiful, informative reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable. Create up to five custom reports with unlimited editing and sharing. All for free.

Get started today so you can:

  • Put all your data to work. Easily access the data sources you need to understand your business and make better decisions.
  • Transform your data. Quickly transform raw data into easy-to-follow reports and dashboards — no code or queries required.
  • Build engaging reports and dashboards. Data Studio gives you the ability to create meaningful, shareable charts and graphs that bring your data to life.
  • Leverage teamwork that works. Work together quickly, from anywhere, by sharing reports via Google Drive.

Not sure where to start? Good news: We’re releasing our first batch of templates today to remove that hurdle. Businesses can use a library of templates to get up and running in a matter of minutes.



Get started for free.

Happy reporting!
The Data Studio team

*Canada, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Indonesia, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam

Posted by Kevin Fields, Product Marketing Manager, Data Studio

Explore important insights from your data — automatically

For marketers, business owners, and product designers, it’s important to be connected to data at all times. However, data by itself rarely provides the insight needed to truly drive a business forward. It can take hours of analysis to come up with just one or two key insights and even longer to share and act on that new understanding. In a constantly-connected world, where customers can make purchases anywhere, anytime from their mobile devices, this lag in time-to-insight is costly.

That’s why we’re pleased to announce that we’re providing a new stream of automated insights in the Google Analytics mobile app. Available on the Assistant screen, this addition to Google Analytics lets you see in 5 minutes what might have taken hours to discover previously. Even better: it gets smarter over time as it learns about your business and your needs. It’s available now in our mobile app on Android and iOS, so you can easily grab insights on the go.
To enable this functionality, we use Google machine intelligence to find critical insights among the thousands of metric and dimension combinations that can be reported in Google Analytics. It helps make analytics data universally accessible and useful as it:
  • Combs through your data to give you meaningful insights and recommendations.
  • Offers quick tips on how to improve your Google Analytics data.
  • Gets smarter over time by reacting to your feedback and how you use it.
  • Helps you share insights so your whole team can take action.

Go beyond simple reporting to view findings and insights automatically, in language you can read: our insight stream enables faster, more informed decision-making that can have real impact on your business.

For example, the holiday season drives a huge portion of annual sales for many retailers. During this busy time of the year, retailers face questions that can be the difference between making their numbers for the year or falling short: Which products are going to be popular this season? Where should we advertise? How are our customers hearing about us and purchasing from us? Answering just one of these questions and acting on that information can take analysts and marketers hours or even days.

Data insights in Google Analytics automate the first steps of answering these questions by instantaneously surfacing opportunities and anomalies hiding in the data. For example, they can tell you which products are experiencing higher than normal sales growth, which advertising channels are driving the most conversions and the best returns, and on which devices customers engage with your brand. This moment-to-moment information gives retailers the power to make nimble, smart decisions that directly impact performance.
You can view your automated insights in the Assistant tab in the official Google Analytics mobile app on Android and iOS for all English-speaking users. We're working to bring this exciting functionality to the web version of Google Analytics and to expand availability to other languages.

We plan on improving with your feedback, so please try the app and then let us know what insights you’d like to see automated.
Posted by Ajay Nainani, Product Manager, Google Analytics

Which TV Ads Made the Podium During the 2016 Olympics Opening Ceremonies?

When the 2016 Olympics kicked off last Friday, many TV advertisers were crossing their fingers that their strategy would pay off. Reaching an estimated 26.5 million total viewers in the U.S., they were hoping their ads delivered relevant and compelling creative to the right audiences. To answer the pay-off question, advertisers will predominately look at three specific areas of performance:

  1. Which ads were noticed by the audience?
  2. Which ads drove interest, shifted perception, and increased intent?
  3. And, which ads drove actual consumer response?

To get some insights into these questions, Google evaluated the top 10 brands (based on total ad minutes) that aired ads during the live broadcast of the opening ceremonies. The analysis is based on a combination of consumer surveys and second-screen (mobile, desktop, and tablet) response data. Presented in a live Google Data Studio dashboard, the result is a unique view into the full-funnel performance of the ads evaluated.

Awareness

Commercials during large, live sporting events like the Olympics are often uniquely created to leverage both the scale of the audience and the context of the event. Whether it is telling the personal story of an athlete or playing to our passions like patriotism, they are intended to strike an emotional connection, entertain us, or make us stand up and take notice.

Coca Cola was the big winner with almost 35% of respondents having remembered seeing the ad when prompted—a result that outpaces typical recall rates in the 20%-25% range. Not a surprising result from a top CPG brand. Samsung, Chevy, United, and Visa rounded out the top five with respectable recall rates.
TV Ad Awareness Metrics
35% of respondents remembered seeing the Coca Cola ad.
Additionally, of those respondents recalling the ad, only 40% could recall the specific product or service featured in the ad. The net is that only about 8% of viewers can recall both the brand and product in a specific advertisement. For many of the ads this was the first airing and it is reasonable to expect these numbers to improve substantially with increased exposure over the next couple of weeks.

Interest

Advertisers also want the ad to shift perceptions and create interest in the product or service featured. By surveying both viewers who saw the ad (exposed) and those who did not (unexposed), we are able to get insights into the impact of each ad’s messaging and creative. Overall, the results were impressive. On average, respondents who saw the ads were 18% more positive about the associated brands than those who did not. Likewise, respondents who saw the ads were 16% more likely to find out more and/or purchase the product being advertised.
TV Ad Interest Metrics
Consumers who saw the ads were 18% more positive about the brand and were 16% more likely to find out more or purchase the product in the ad.
Interestingly, the baseline favorability and purchase intentions for both non-sponsors and Olympic sponsors are relatively equal. And for the most part, the ad’s impact on both factors was the same across non-sponsors and sponsors.

Desire

These commercials don’t just make us laugh or make us feel better about the brand—they also make us search and visit websites. Second-screen searching—whether it’s to re-engage with the ad or to learn more about the product—is a powerful indication of desire. By measuring incremental search queries on Google and YouTube during the broadcast that are specific and modeled to be attributable to ads shown, we are now able to include responses in our analysis. During the opening ceremonies, TV ad driven searches were almost exclusively on mobile—94% compared to an average of 56% for those brands when the ads were not airing. For brands, that means a presence on the TV screen isn’t complete without a strategy for small screens, as well.
"94% of searches on Google and YouTube as a result of seeing the ads occurred on mobile devices."
McDonald’s took the top spot on the podium with 42% more searches than the average. BMW and Samsung fought it out for second and third with 14% and 12% respectively. The answer to the question “Do emotional and inspiring ads work?” is, in this instance, “Yes.” But so do product-featured ads. Both inspiring and product ad creatives drove 10% more searches on average. Also, ads by sponsors drove 14% more searches than their non-sponsor counterparts.
TV Ad Response Metrics
Compared to the average of the top 10 ads studied, McDonald’s drove 42% more searches.
Finally, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 ad was the overall winner with strong full-funnel performance placing in the top three across all three funnel stages. Whether people are tuning into the Olympics or their favorite TV show, they use their smartphones to search for information triggered by what they’re seeing. That means if you advertise on TV, you can now get a new view of performance across each stage of the funnel—using a combination of consumer surveys and digital response, all in a matter of days. Armed with these new insights, advertisers are now able to better understand and improve the performance of these investments in concert with their digital media.

Sourcing

Using Google Consumer Surveys to provide consumer ad awareness and interest research, an online survey was conducted in the United States during the period 8/6 - 8/9/16 using a validated, representative sample with a minimum of 750 respondents. Response data is based on incremental TV ad-driven search queries (Google and YouTube) during the course of the broadcast that are specific to the ad shown and are modeled by Google Attribution 360 to be attributable to the airings of the commercials. Response data is normalized for total commercial air time during the broadcast for each advertiser and indexed to the average.

Happy Analyzing,

Posted by Casey Carey, Director of Marketing, Google Analytics

Adapting Measurement Strategies for Modern Marketing

Last week Forrester Research hosted a Forum for Marketing Leaders in New York City. I had the pleasure of speaking with top enterprise executives about data and analytics strategies to help them harness the exponential increase in data volume — caused by new devices, channels, and fragmented audiences — and turn data into useful insights.

Mobile has changed everything for everyone. For marketers, mobile has presented an opportunity to learn much more about consumer behavior. Marketers can then use those insights to deliver useful brand experiences in intent-rich moments when consumers are looking to buy.

But it’s not easy. Mobile has fractured the customer journey into little pieces (of data) and most legacy systems are ill-suited to organize, process, and make sense of all this data. Businesses could never hire enough people to mine all this data because it is growing and compounding so quickly — it’s just not practical. It’s estimated that 90% of the world’s data was created in the past two years. Think about that.

While conducting a recent research study we discovered the top challenges enterprise marketers are facing in a mobile-dominated world. We studied these challenges, spoke with executives at leading organizations, and brainstormed with our own engineers to develop strategies and products to help marketers win in today’s modern world.
  1. Understand the customer journey. Marketers need complete data to see what’s happening across the entire customer journey. Views of performance based on sessions, devices, and channels are no longer sufficient. The new view of performance means putting customers at the center of marketing strategy, which requires a data toolset that’s integrated across channels, touchpoints, and devices.
  2. Get useful insights, not just more data. The masses of digital information produced each day mean marketers need enormous computing power, data science, and smart algorithms all working together to quickly make sense of data for them. Tools that can perform ongoing automated analysis and spotlight opportunities for marketers are essential to ensure future success.
  3. Share insights with everyone. Putting data into everyone’s hands gets the whole company on the same page, strengthens cross-functional goals, and drives smarter decision-making. Data isn’t just for analysts anymore. For organizations to truly adapt for success, they need more people using insights and more people collaborating to spark great ideas. Tools offering data visualization and instant sharing help foster a truly data-driven culture.
  4. Deliver engaging experiences to the right people. When organizations provide customers with personal and relevant brand interactions — that deliver real value — it naturally leads to better marketing performance. The consumer wins and the marketer wins. Achieving this state depends on seamless data integrations across multiple technologies and platforms — and on executing instantly. Tools that swiftly integrate well with others will lead the way.

These four strategies work together to create a virtuous cycle that drives marketing results and a competitive advantage. We built the Google Analytics 360 Suite to help marketers execute on these strategies and overcome today’s challenges and win in the multi-screen world.

Learn how Progressive is using the Google Analytics 360 Suite to improve their customer experience and turn browsers into buyers.

Posted by Paul Pellman, Director of Data and Measurement at Google

New Study Reveals Why Integrated Marketing Analytics Are Critical to Success in Enterprise Measurement

Marketers have an increasingly complicated job, with access to an unprecedented amount of customer insights and analytics tools. A new study from Forrester Consulting uncovers how successful organizations use marketing analytics tools to develop relevant customer experiences.

Consumers expect to find what they want anytime, anywhere from their smartphones, tablets, and laptop. These micro-moments offer marketers more opportunities than ever before to connect and engage. They also enable marketers to learn valuable insights about consumer behavior. With so much customer data to consider, effective marketing measurement is more important than ever before.

To understand the challenges marketers face in measuring performance and creating a well-integrated tool set, Google commissioned Forrester Consulting to perform an in-depth survey of 150 marketing, analytics, and information technology executives. The research revealed how successful marketers are able to leverage analytics tools effectively so they make the most of consumer interactions.

Key findings:
  • Marketers must be able to tie performance to business results. Among the survey respondents identified as "sophisticated marketers," 53% stated they adhere to well-established metrics that tie directly to business objectives. These marketers support organizations that are at least 3X more likely to hit their goals than other marketing organizations.
  • The right tools are critical to success. Only 26% of marketers surveyed believed that their marketing analytics tools are well-integrated and work seamlessly together. But, marketers with well-integrated tools were more likely to outperform revenue goals.
  • Marketers that implement complete marketing analytics platforms see an increase in performance. Sophisticated marketers who deploy a complete marketing analytics stack of five or more tools are 39% more likely to see improvement in the overall performance of their marketing programs.
To learn more about improving marketing performance with analytics, check out the full study, "Discover How Marketing Analytics Increases Business Performance."

Post By, Suzanne Mumford, Head of Marketing, Google Analytics 360 Suite


Start measuring your TV ads with the precision of digital

“The challenge with television is that there’s no link to click on,” says Alex Bain, Marketing Analyst for Nest. The company makes products for the thoughtful home, but was having a hard time understanding the effect of its TV ads on digital visits and sales.

That's why the Nest marketing team turned to the Google Analytics 360 Suite while running a set of six TV ads last holiday season. The suite's TV attribution features are designed to measure the impact of ads on search activity and website visits. As a result, Nest could see the channels and times of day where its ads had the most impact. The metrics arrive almost immediately, so the Nest team found itself spending less time trying to get answers and more time taking action on what they learned.

The good results that Nest is getting are available to anyone. Watch the video for more details.
 
 Post by, Suzanne Mumford Head of Marketing, Google Analytics 360 Suite

From Insights to Impact: Driving Value with Analytics

At eTail West this week we were thrilled to give a joint presentation with Chris Duncan, VP of Strategic Marketing for Kohl's, a $19B+ retailer making big strides in omni-channel analytics.  Casey Carey, Head of Marketing for Google Analytics, kicked off the presentation with highlights from our new report with Harvard Business Review.  Following Casey's introduction, Chris gave the audience a glimpse into the Kohl’s Greatness Agenda, launched in 2014 with the goal of becoming “the most engaging retailer in America.”

Kohl’s has seen the growing effect of micro-moments on their business in recent years and has used measurement and analytics to gain key insights:
  • They had more visits on digital devices last year than in all stores combined.
  • Most of their sales are driven by people who have engaged with more than one marketing channel.
  • Customers who engage online are spending more in-store.
Kohl’s has taken action, finding better ways to engage consumers across channels.  They combined direct mail with digital display to make their direct mail dollars go further, they blended email marketing with social media to increase app downloads by 180%, and they got hyper-local with digital display and paid search.  In other words, they used their insights to drive action.

The Google Analytics team is all about turning insights into action, which is why we commissioned a study with Harvard Business Review—we wanted to understand how great companies are using insights to drive customer value.  The findings are compelling:  some companies who capture the full customer journey with integrated data are generating up to 8.5x higher shareholder value.


We invite you to read the full report to learn how great companies like Kohl's are analyzing and acting to create value for their customers and for themselves.

Posted by:  Jocelyn Whittenburg, Product Marketing Manager

Measuring Super Bowl 50’s Top TV Ads with TV Attribution

Each year, hundreds of millions of us gather around TVs to watch America’s big game — the Super Bowl. And for many, the TV commercials are at least or maybe even more interesting than the game itself. Companies annually spend millions of dollars trying to entertain us or tug at our heartstrings. For these advertisers, it is straight up, unabashed brand advertising. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

However, other advertisers are looking to accomplish something much different. The goal of their ads is to pique your interest, get you to find out more about the product, and yes, maybe even make a purchase. In a word, their success is based on creating “intent.” Unfortunately, understanding the impact of TV advertising based on consumer response has historically been difficult at best.

Enter the second screen. According to a recent report by Accenture, 87% of consumers use a second screen device (laptop, tablet, phone) while watching TV. The result is a direct connection between TV commercials and digital activity including search queries, search clicks, and direct website visits. Adometry TV Attribution uses machine-learning techniques to model this minute-by-minute response data and estimate the incremental impact of each unique TV spot at very granular level. In essence, it allows you to measure TV just like digital.

So, how did the TV ads from Super Bowl 50 fare when measured by Adometry TV Attribution? From a response perspective, this year’s top TV commercials are:


A much different list than that of AdvertisingAge’s top rated commercials based on creative. For a complete rundown of the TV Attribution results, check out the full article on Think with Google which includes a complete list of the top ten Super Bowl commercials, along with response volume by quarter and device. 

The takeaway? For those investing in TV advertising with the goal of creating intent, you also need an effective strategy to capture and engage consumers on their second screens. In doing so, your consumers will have a much better experience and you’ll see even bigger ROI.

Posted by Casey Carey, Google Analytics team