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5 key campaign metrics: What to count

April 7, 2009 When you're creating an online campaign, there are 5 key metrics you should consider measuring:

1.  Impressions - The number of times each of your ads will be displayed for a websites' visitors.  When buying ad space on another site, you may pay CPM, or cost-per-thousand impressions. Generally, the higher the number of impressions, the higher your reach.

2.  Reach - The overall size of the audience that saw your campaign.  The reason is obvious - the more people who see your ad, the better the chance they're remember it. 

3.  Frequency - The average number of times the audience was exposed to your message.  The golden rule has always been a person has to see an ad seven times before it registers to memory, unless it's a fantastic ad that captures their attention the first time (I can count the ones I remember on one hand).  If you annoy them with over-exposure, you have a diminishing rate of returns; if you show it too little, they most likely won't remember you when it comes time to make a purchase. 

4.  Unique users - The number of users with a unique IP address who visit a website, or saw your ad, and is usually counted on a monthly basis.  When placing an ad, you want to measure both unique visitors and the number of impressions because this will help you determine frequency.  If you have 200,000 impressions and 100,000 unique visitors, your ad was seen twice by each person...too little. 

5.  Click-through rate or CTR - The equation is the # of people who clicked on the ad divided by the number of times the ad was delivered x 100. Think of it this way, your ad had 200,000 impressions and generated 4,370 recorded click-throughs, which averaged a CTR of 2%.

For more information, check out the Interactive Advertising Bureau's site for Standards, Guidelines & Best Practices

For analytics for your website, check out Google's free version of Google Analytics.

Posted by Suze Bragg on April 7, 2009 | Comments (0)