5 Digital Metrics You Should Be Monitoring If You’re Not

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the vast number of metrics and the sea of acronyms that are regularly used in digital advertising, well, you are not alone—in fact you are in good company. As the digital marketing ecosystem continues to evolve, more and more metrics are added—all claiming to provide better insight into digital performance and return on investment. But which are really the best? Which should you focus on? Although goals and results are unique to each advertiser, there are plenty of vanity metrics that can be more distracting than helpful. In this blog post, we will review what I think are some of the best unique and advanced metrics that you should add to your watchlist to assist in making the most of your digital marketing efforts.

1. Reach/Unique Impressions

The number of people who saw your ads at least once. Different from total impressions, reach/unique impressions include multiple views of your ads by the same person. This metric gives you the clearest measure of how many people were exposed to your message during an ad campaign, not simply the number times an ad was delivered. Reach/unique impressions can be affected by bids, budgets, and targeting, but having visibility into total number of people reached (people-based measurement) is vital.

2. Frequency

The average number of times each person saw your ad. Calculated as total impressions divided by reach, frequency is helpful in measuring both awareness AND fatigue of your ad campaigns. Frequency can be impacted by bids, budgets, targeting, and schedule, so it’s important to monitor frequency alongside results and other important metrics. Lower frequencies could indicate your targeting is too broad for your budget, while higher frequencies could indicate that your audience is seeing your ad too much—and thereby experiencing ad fatigue. This is especially important as you seek to understand a drop in performance.

3. CPM (Cost Per 1000 Impressions)

The average cost to reach 1,000 people. This metric is calculated as the total amount spent, divided by reach (total number of people), multiplied by 1,000. CPM measures the cost-efficiency and value of an ad campaign, especially for campaigns that use a CPM bidding model. Affected by bids, competition, budget, objective, and targeting, CPM has proven to be a metric that rivals CPC (Cost Per Click) and CPR (Cost Per Result) in evaluating campaign efficiency – return on investment – over time.

4. Impression Share/Lost Impression Share

The percentage of impressions that your ads received compared to the total number of impressions (eligible impressions) that your ads could have gotten. This Google metric is calculated as impressions divided by total eligible impressions. Eligible impressions are estimated using many factors associated with evaluating Ad Rank. Impression Share (IS) data provides some of the best visibility into campaign, ad group, and keyword performance to help you understand whether you should increase your bid or budget to reach more people.

Similarly, Lost Impression Share (IS) is the percentage of time your ads weren’t shown due to issues outside of keywords not matching actual user-searched queries. Two main reasons for high Lost Impressions Share could be Ad Rank or budget, providing two additional metrics to consider:

• Search Lost IS (Rank): The percentage of time your ad didn’t appear because of poor ad rank (determined by your bid relative to your competitors and by your ad quality).
• Search Lost IS (Budget): The percentage of time your ad didn’t appear because your budget is too low.

5. Optimization Score

An estimate of how well your Google Ads account is set to perform. First introduced in July 2018 and now readily available to all Google Ads users, this score provides visibility into the alignment of your ad campaigns with Google best practices. Scores run from 0 to 100 percent and come with recommendations from Google on how to better meet you campaign goals. A score closer to 100 percent indicates near perfect alignment with Google best practices and a great opportunity for maximizing results.

Watch my discussion with Scott Jeffe to learn more about using these metrics

Focus on the digital metrics that deliver the best strategic insights

Understanding campaign performance can be challenging with so many metrics and reports available. By focusing on a few of the most important—those with the clearest and most precise implications—the marketer can leverage insights into strong actions with good return on investment while filtering out a lot of the noise. These five metrics are only a handful of those available to advertisers each day, but are some of the most impactful to good campaign management and decision making.

Let’s talk about how you can get better insights from your digital reporting and management efforts. Contact RNL and we’ll set up a time for you to talk with our digital marketing experts.