Marketers are swimming in data, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the digital marketing sphere. At the same time, they must work with advertising organizations to glean the metrics that will help justify their spending to the C-suite. But with so much data and so many reporting possibilities, what are the best metrics to use?
Front-end metrics are those that reveal the results of digital campaigns. They are important metrics to follow, but they are often difficult to tie to revenue, unless combined with other metrics. Advertising organizations use these metrics to discover trends, identify the big picture and figure out what works and what doesn’t.
- Impressions are the number of times your ad is displayed. A targeted consumer may receive multiple impressions of the same ad.
Usefulness on its own: D+ - Reach counts the number of people who received impressions of your ad. This will likely be different than impressions, because often in targeted campaigns, people receive multiple impressions.
Usefulness on its own: C - Engagement rate is the percentage of users who engaged with your ad, e.g., likes, shares, clicks, and comments. It is especially useful in deciding which formats to use and for A/B testing.
Usefulness on its own: B- - Clicks are obviously the number of times your ad is clicked. This can be an especially important metric when you are A/B testing ads.
Usefulness on its own: B - Click-through-rate (CTR) measures ad efficiency. The formula used is the number of clicks divided by the number of total impressions. When used to track multiple ads on multiple platforms, you are then able to see where your dollars have been best spent.
Usefulness on its own: B+ - Conversions tracks the number of actions or sales based on an ad. Conversions are useful for evaluating the cost per action or cost per sale.
Usefulness on its own: A- - Effective-cost-per-thousand (eCPM) is the total number of impressions (in thousands) divided by the total earnings generated. It is different, then, from CPM, which is simply what you paid for the ad. Here, you are learning about the performance of the ad.
Usefulness on its own: A
When used together, all of these front end metrics are useful, some clearly more so than others. The more important ones are those that you definitely want to get from advertising organizations with which you work.
