April 24th, 2023 – Article by Mary Layden

Determining the best metrics to effectively optimize your media investments can be a daunting task. Between the fragmented media landscape, ever-changing consumer behaviors, and the increasing need for updated and customized attribution methodologies, it’s become increasingly difficult to pinpoint the right metrics that will help deliver the best results for your campaign. 

Defining the Right KPIs

As we know, media performance is linked to Key Performance Indicators (or KPIs).  As a best practice, marketers and agencies always define their objectives depending on the business outcomes they’d like to achieve. E-commerce brands, for example, typically track their cost per conversion, while offline retailers evaluate their in-store turnover.  While it’s easy to assume that everything comes down to Return On Ad Spend (or ROAS) the reality is that media efficiency is hard to define and monitor. 

Optimizing Toward Cost Per In-Store Visits

Optimizing media investment can mean lowering CPMs or increasing performance within the same budget.  For online businesses, it makes sense to optimize against CTR and conversion rates as the results can be measured in an online environment. Conversely, for retailers that are using digital media to deliver offline results (like an in-store visit) optimizing towards things like CTRs won’t be a great indicator of media efficiency and if they are delivering against their business goals. This is why more brands are turning towards business-driven KPIs like Cost Per In-Store Visit. This advanced metric allows advertisers to optimize their investments in real-time, ensuring they are tracking toward their goals and driving as much foot traffic to their brick-and-mortar locations as possible.

While Cost per In-Store Visit typically requires more setup and access to insights like mobility data and points of interest (or POIs), when used properly, brands are able to deliver massive returns on their investment.  Our clients like Nespresso and Hyundai have seen strong results when optimizing their media investments toward CPVs. This has also been an especially valuable tactic for our QSR clients, with almost all of them now prioritizing Cost per In-Store Visit as their number one KPI for their drive-to-store campaigns.