In today’s performance-driven paid social advertising landscape, it is easy to focus solely on familiar metrics like CTR, CPM, ROAS, and CPA. They’re immediate, accessible, and easy to report. However, if you are only measuring Meta ad performance based on what is instantaneously accessible, you’re overlooking a critical part of the picture - are your ads driving incremental brand impact?
That is where Meta’s Brand Lift Study comes in.
Meta Brand Lift studies are an extremely powerful way to understand how your Meta ads are influencing consumer perception of your brand beyond the immediately trackable data more commonly associated with performance marketing.
What is a Meta Brand Lift Study?
A Brand Lift study is a controlled experiment offered through the Meta Business platform that measures the incremental impact of your ads on brand perception categories including:
Standard Ad Recall
“Do you recall seeing an ad for [Page name] online or on a mobile device in the last 2 days?”
Standard Brand Awareness
“Have you heard of [Page name]?”
Familiarity
“How familiar are you with [Page name]?”
Favorability
“How would you describe your overall opinion of [Page name]?”
Recommendation
“Will you recommend [Page name] to a friend?”
Here is how it works: Meta splits your eligible audience into two randomized groups - those who see your ads (the test group) and those who don’t (the holdout group). Both groups are later served a short in-feed multiple choice survey with questions specific to your brand and their ads.
More on the available Meta Brand Lift Study questions.
The test will then calculate the difference in performance between each group by survey question, which represents the incremental brand lift of your ads by category (favorability, recall, awareness, etc)
Step by step instructions on how to properly create a Meta Brand Lift test here
Unfortunately, there are minimum spend requirements that must be met in order to qualify for a meta brand lift study, which vary by targeted country. Find Meta Brand Lift Study requirements here
Why should your brand participate?
Measuring brand awareness impact on Meta can be difficult in general. While we easily have access to metrics like CPM & Reach, it is difficult to understand whether or not our ads are really impacting perception of the brand.
Upper funnel campaigns often face budget scrutiny for that very reason - because their impact is not as tangibly measurable as say a sales, lead generation, or traffic campaign.
A brand lift study can help validate dollars spent on top of funnel initiatives, or help prove that non-ToFu initiatives are having an impact on brand perception in addition to driving clicks, ROAS, etc.
The results are real survey answers from your target audience, essentially giving you a way to ask what they think about your brand with minimal effort on your part.
Additionally, the results of these studies can clue you into the impact of your ad creative on your audience across the key brand metrics. If the study shows minimal lift, it is a clear signal. It may be time to switch up your messaging, refresh your visuals, or reframe your narrative to improve consumer perception.
If you're running ads on Meta, a Brand Lift Study isn't just a nice tool to have access to, it's a strategic experiment to validate impact, justify spend, and refine your approach. If you qualify, run one. You’ll walk away with real insights directly from your audience, insight into creative impact, and a more compelling reporting story that goes beyond the easily accessible, familiar metrics.
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