Scalable creative quality measurement reveals advertisers could double YouTube ad ROI

- Creative execution is a significant driver of sales
- Three golden advertising rules to improve YouTube creative effectiveness
- More than double video ad ROI
- Methodology for capturing creative quality in measurement

NEW YORK, July 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- In a new YouTube study commissioned by Google, global leader in data science Ekimetrics has developed a groundbreaking approach to video ad creative effectiveness measurement. It also identified the opportunity to more than double YouTube ROI, with three golden advertising rules for marketers to follow.

The independent study used over three years of Marketing Mix Models (MMMs) from four participating brands to quantify the impact of ad creative quality on YouTube video performance.

Not only did the study find that creative execution is a significant driver of sales performance, it has also resulted in a completely new, repeatable and scalable way to measure creative effectiveness. The new methodology helps to understand the impact of creative quality on sales. It is an enhancement to the industry-accepted holistic measurement approach of MMMs, which is a significant step forward in marketing science and a first for the industry.

The study validated and used Google's existing ABCD framework, which consists of 73 creative levers clustered into 'Attention,' 'Branding,' 'Connection' and 'Direction,' proven and derived over several years of research. These were further distilled into 20 creative best practices that explained 80% of the performance for the brands in the study.

It also found that 58% of the video ads assessed were suboptimal, where 'optimal' videos featured nine or more of the 20 best practices, with 'good' featuring five to eight and 'poor' four or less. This finding suggests there is significant opportunity for brands to make substantial gains; turning 'poor' creatives into 'optimal' ones could deliver a 2.2x ROI uplift.

Speaking about the study, Sona Abaryan, Partner, Ekimetrics said, "Finding that more than half of videos were suboptimal was surprising and demonstrates clearly that measuring creative effectiveness is a worthwhile pursuit, with the potential to more than double ROI. Brands are now able to achieve these uplifts through this new, scalable integration into MMM."

Ariane Pol, Global Head of Research, Google Creative Works, added, "Where previous studies have shown the importance of creative, they have been one offs with no mechanism to operationalize measurement. It's incredibly exciting that now, for the first time, based on our ABCD creative principles we have both a repeatable methodology and three golden rules that help marketers to focus their efforts on the areas that will make the biggest difference."

"Brands that adopt the methodology to understand their own creative performance will truly tackle this final frontier in marketing effectiveness, and we're delighted to have been part of the development of a quantifiable framework for creative execution. What's more, while this study was based on YouTube, we believe the methodology will translate to other video advertising, including TV."

Ekimetrics has released two whitepapers on the study for two key audiences, detailing the technical approach and commercial imperative for adoption:

Advertisers/Marketers: https://ekimetrics.com/white-paper/youtube-creative-effectiveness-three-golden-rules-that-could-double-roi

Technical: https://ekimetrics.com/white-paper/advanced-study-measuring-youtube-ad-creative-quality-impact-at-scale

About Ekimetrics

'Analytics Company of the Year' (British Data Awards 2023), Ekimetrics is a leader in data science and AI-powered solutions. Since 2006, we've pioneered the use of AI and advanced data science applied to unified marketing measurement, holistic business optimization and broad-ranging sustainability goals.
Our goal: to combine high impact with long-term business purpose.
Ekimetrics is one of the world's largest independent analytics firms, with offices on 3 continents, and more than 400 data experts. We've led thousands of data science projects in over 50 countries, generating more than €1bn in profit for our customers.

REDEFINING PERFORMANCE

We help companies rethink the way they operate, so they can reconcile financial KPIs with non-financial goals. We are uniquely specialized in creating scalable data and analytics solutions that drive high-impact optimizations aligned to overarching brand strategy and sustainability goals.
X: @ekimetrics
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/420140/
https://ekimetrics.com/

Ekimetrics' creative MMM meta-analysis was commissioned by Google in 2024. The research included four US brands in beauty, luxury and automotive. It spanned $21.4M of adspend, 20 models and 1634 campaigns with 2.4B video impressions across 225 weeks between 2019 and 2023.

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SOURCE Ekimetrics