Why Behavioral Outcomes deliver more than the digital metrics you may use 

In the digital media space, metrics such as reach, CPM, and CTR are commonly used to gauge campaign success. However, while these metrics can indicate the extent of visibility or cost effectiveness, they often fail to deliver meaningful business outcomes.  

Let’s see why, and how Behavioral Outcomes—tangible actions like sales lift, brand perception shifts, attention and foot traffic—can help you better measure your marketing efforts. 

The limits of digital metrics 

In digital media, planning and buying KPIs play a pivotal role, and many advertisers focus on reach and CPM for efficiency purposes and KPIs like CTR for a measure of performance. 

However, the industry’s reliance on these metrics can be misleading, as they often fall short in delivering real-world impact when optimized within digital platforms. Campaigns focusing on reach or CPM frequently yield disappointing business results. 

Campaigns optimized for reach . This is critical to consider . 

Despite reaching more people, these campaigns also struggle due to low quality inventory, often a byproduct of bidding dynamics where lower costs lead to lower quality placements.  Optimal placements, on the other hand, . 

Many brands attempt to measure placement quality using clicks (CTR), views (VTR), or conversions (CPA), but these proxies often fall short. Industry research highlights the weak correlation between CTR and actual intent, with clicks often failing to reflect genuine engagement: 

• CTR correlates poorly with ROI (-0.07) and purchase intent (<0.01). 
• 8% of internet users are responsible for 85% of clicks, diluting CTR's reliability as a measure. 

Similarly, the video views (VTR) metric is flawed, with . This is partly because passive views (where users let videos play without attention) and autoplay mechanics inflate viewing metrics.  

Conversions (CPA), though seemingly a strong metric of intent, are frequently flawed due to view-through conversions, which assign credit simply because an ad was seen. “A large proportion of companies still rely on the CPA last-click attribution model, even though it has a major limitation in reflecting real life buying behaviours. It can distort budget allocations and media buying decisions, leading brands to place far too much budget on channels favoured by the last click model, while overlooking other channels that can drive incremental results.”&苍产蝉辫;

Behavioral Outcomes lead to meaningful business gains 

So, what measures truly indicate success? The answer lies in focusing on Behavioral Outcomes—clear, real-world actions like brand perception changes, searches, sales, or foot traffic. Behavioral Outcomes lead to meaningful business gains by focusing on metrics with a proven connection to revenue and customer engagement: 

• Brand Lift: Even small lifts in Awareness & Consideration . 
• Lift Studies: An advertiser using Brand Lift, Search Lift and Conversion Lift across their activity experienced . 

Other behavioral metrics also reveal significant impacts: 

• Search Lift: Share of search is an accurate proxy to Share of Market, because . Research has validated this with . 
• Footfall: Campaigns focusing on footfall lift drive a . 
• Sales Lift: A logical and direct metric that is calculated through real-world revenue generation, therefore being intrinsically linked with Business Outcomes. 

When direct behavior measurement is challenging, Attention Metrics serve as an effective solution, with . 

Three steps to embrace Behavioral Outcomes  

To shift toward Behavioral Outcomes, brands can adopt these steps: 

1. Identify Behaviors that align with brand goals: Focus on Brand Lift for upper funnel outcomes and Sales Lift for lower funnel results. 
2. Standardize Measurement Across Campaigns: Use consistent methodologies to enable comparable results across all activated components. 
3. Develop a Measurement Framework: Define when to apply behavioral metrics and how to optimize tactics within the framework. 

As we have seen, traditional metrics like reach, CPM, CTR, and CPA often fail to generate valuable business results, leading to wasted impressions and low quality interactions. By shifting focus to Behavioral Outcomes, brands can align digital efforts with genuine business growth, capturing improvements in revenue, market share, and customer acquisition through a targeted and impactful measurement approach.