Measuring Brand lift has become critical for marketers who want to move beyond surface-level KPIs like clicks and impressions. But what exactly does “brand lift” mean—and how can you measure it?
In this article, we’ll define brand lift, break down the metrics behind it, and explain how it can help you improve campaign performance and brand perception.
OVERVIEW
What is Brand lift?
If you’re wondering what Brand Lift is and why it matters, Brand lift is a way to measure the impact of advertising on consumer perceptions and intentions and understanding the core brand lift methodology is essential to interpret results correctly. It helps brands understand how their campaigns influence metrics such as awareness, ad recall, brand familiarity, consideration, and purchase intent.
Unlike performance metrics that track immediate actions like clicks or conversions, Brand lift reveals how advertising shapes the way people think and feel about a brand. It captures the changes that happen in the mind of the audience—whether they remember seeing the ad, whether they associate it with the right brand, and whether it affects their likelihood to engage or buy.
Brand lift is relevant across all channels—digital, TV, out-of-home, and more—and is used by both advertisers and media sellers to evaluate campaign effectiveness. For advertisers, it shows whether a campaign is successfully moving audiences through the brand funnel. For platforms and publishers, it demonstrates the value of their media in driving meaningful brand outcomes.
What does Brand lift measure?
Brand lift measurement often focuses on KPIs such as:
Ad recall: Did people remember seeing your ad?
Attribution: Can viewers link the ad to your brand?
Brand familiarity: Do people know more about your brand or product because of the campaign?
Consideration: Are they more likely to consider buying?
Purchase intent: Does your campaign drive action?
How does it work?
Brand lift measurement involves comparing the responses of people who saw an ad (or heard it, in the case of digital audio brand lift) to those who didn’t, helping advertisers understand the ad’s actual impact on those KPIs.
The answers collected are used to understand to which extent the campaign has impacted consumers for each assessed metric. This comparison is foundational for brand lift, but also for broader brand awareness measurement, where understanding incremental exposure impact is key.
3 ways Brand lift measurement elevates ad campaigns
With these insights, advertisers can make data-driven decisions to improve campaign performance. Indeed, measuring Brand lift can be beneficial for advertisers in multiple ways—from benchmarking and understanding performance to optimizing strategies and ensuring that every dollar of ad spend is used effectively and efficiently.
Here are three key reasons that Brand lift measurement can be a great investment.
Reason #1: Prove the real impact of your campaigns
In 2025, economic factors compel brands to be more cautious with their investments. This doesn’t mean that they don’t want to communicate less; they want to communicate better by optimizing every dollar spent to achieve their marketing objectives.
Advertising KPIs, including standard metrics such as impressions, click-through rate, and engagement rate are no longer enough to convince brands of the success of their campaigns and the ROI of their hard-earned budgets.
Meanwhile, the “walled garden” approach of advertising platforms and their metrics specifically built for their environment is no longer as appealing. Indeed, brands seeking greater transparency find it increasingly challenging to trust a business model where the player selling advertising space is also measuring the results.
Brand lifts address these challenges perfectly. The tangible metrics Brand lifts provide enable advertisers to prove the real impact of campaigns on brands or products with consumers. These results will allow brands to demonstrate to their management the impact of each investment in achieving their objectives.
Brands benefit from relevant insights to understand how to optimize their next investments. This means they’re better prepared to negotiate budgets in order to replicate and improve the campaigns that work best.
A Brand lift performed by a trusted third party reassures brands by guaranteeing that results are objectively measured—eliminating bias and building trust through independent validation of campaign performance.
Reason #2: Benchmark and improve against competitors
Brands are very focused on their position in the market. They want to be able to compare themselves to their competitors on everything they do, which includes the advertising campaigns that they run. This means that brands rarely sign a first collaboration on a campaign without considering alternatives.
Sometimes, demand side players may even directly compete with other providers on the same campaign. The brand then decides to continue collaborating on a long-term contract with the service provider(s) that stand out from the crowd. The success of the campaign is a prerequisite for this, but so is the trust relationship created by the high quality and transparency of the results provided.
A Brand lift helps ad techs objectively demonstrate to their clients the performance of their campaign. When it includes a benchmark comparison, brands can compare their results with similar campaigns across industries and media.
Ad techs can fully prove that their offer and their team’s expertise have enabled advertisers to outperform market benchmarks on the metrics that really matter for their objectives.
A Brand lift provides results on the overall exposed population while providing a more accurate view of sub-targets, mainly on the core target of the campaign.
When demand side players have to compete with several providers, these transparent and tangible results help differentiate them from competitors.
By consistently measuring Brand lift, ad techs benefit from a major competitive edge and a comprehensive track record of success. It’s perfect for attracting new leads more efficiently and streamlining sales negotiations.
Reason #3: Drive better performance and long-term growth
For ad tech professionals, publishers and agencies, sustainable growth depends on two things: delivering measurable value to clients, and running operations efficiently enough to scale. This means not only acquiring and retaining advertisers, but also proving performance in ways that are clear, credible, and fast to act on.
Brand lift measurement helps teams do exactly that. It brings structure to campaign reporting by tying creative performance to real shifts in perception—making it easier to justify spend, compare tactics, and guide future planning. Instead of relying solely on proxy metrics like clicks or impressions, teams can surface insights that matter to their clients and to their bottom line.
Operationally, this means less time spent chasing fragmented data or building reports from scratch. With clearer, consistent insights, account managers and strategists can focus on optimization and client relationships—rather than analysis and admin. Over time, this builds trust, encourages long-term collaboration, and frees up resources to invest in growth.
Happydemics is a leading solution in advertising measurement and a trusted third party approved by major players in the adtech industry.
Our platform enables users to launch Brand lifts in a few seconds to individuals exposed to any campaign on all media, including DOOH, OLV, CTV, audio, in-game, and display.
Our Brand lift solution is unified to easily compare your performance to other players using benchmarks based on more than 2,000 advertisers’ campaigns, across all online and offline media, industries, and markets.
You’ll get precise and clean metrics using Zero Party Data to help your clients stand out from crowded markets and drive business growth.
