HOW TO TEST CROSS-DEVICE MARKETING PERFORMANCE

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Gervais Thompson
7 years ago
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1 HOW TO TEST CROSS-DEVICE MARKETING PERFORMANCE One of the easiest and most effective ways to assess the value of adding cross-device to your marketing campaign is to conduct a performance uplift test.

2 01 How Performance Uplift Testing Works In a performance uplift test, two versions of your campaign are created so results can be compared; a singledevice version and a multi-device version. $ For example, conversion rates for a desktop-only campaign can be compared against a campaign that reached users on both desktop and a mobile phone. In a performance uplift test, some visitors will see the single-device version of the campaign, known as the control version, and some of them will see the multi-device version (the variation). As both campaigns progress, results can be tracked through your analytics tool and the degree by which cross-device produced an uplift in performance can be seen. In your test, cross-device impact can be measured by one or several metrics, such as: RPV (Revenue Per Visitor) Add To Cart Rate Product Page Views Category Page Views AOV (Average Order Value) Click throughs Downloads Video plays Conversion Rate 1

3 02 How To Run A Performance Uplift Test In the following example, we will test a campaign that retargets visitors who have researched your product from their mobile device. The campaign will test the cost-per-acquisition of a cross-device retargeted group against the costper-acquisition of a group marketed to on desktop only. What you will need: An audience segment that has already delivered good results on a single-device campaign A measurement platform (usually your existing marketing automation tool) to track conversions on both mobile and desktop A metric that you wish to track 2

4 While this test covers cost-per-acquisition, you can substitute or add other metrics to your test. Step 1. Place a cross-device tracking pixel onto your mobile website. Step 2. When a visitor visits the mobile website, their cookie ID will then be translated into a matching mobile device ID using the cross-device vendor s device graph. You should leave this running for some time to achieve scale. Within your marketing platform, you will then have two segments; one including the translated mobile devices, and another with the desktop only control group. Step 3. Within your marketing platform, create two desktop campaigns; a cross-device campaign (targeting the new translated segment) and a desktop-only campaign (as a control group). Advert Advert Step 4. The cross-device campaign should be a retargeting campaign targeting only the desktop cookie IDs translated from your mobile visitors segment. (The mobile-to-desktop campaign should initially serve a small number of impressions but should grow progressively as the number of mobile visitors being translated grows.) Step 5. Now, set up the desktop campaign using the same settings as the cross-device campaign (e.g. same creative and geo targeting, but only targeting live visitors to the desktop site.) 3

5 Step 6. Now it s time to launch your campaigns. You should launch the cross-device campaign first. It will take time to scale, so wait until it has reached 25% of the daily cap budget size before launching the desktop campaign. Doing so will ensure that your two campaigns have comparable spend levels, so that this will be a fair test. Step 7. For the duration of the 1-month test, keep optimizing both Campaign A and Campaign B as you normally would, to ensure the test provides a realistic outcome. Step 8. Measure cost-per-acquisition using your existing tools (since all traffic is being measured by conversions on desktop, you can continue to use whatever tool you use to count conversions on desktop): Ensure the mobile-to-desktop campaign can spend the allocated budget For direct response activity, you can calculate the relative performance uplift using the following formula: Cost- Per-Acquisition Control Group / Cost-Per-Acquisition of Retargeting Campaign For brand activity, relative brand engagement uplift can be calculated by: Click Through Rate of Retargeting Campaign / Click Through Rate of Control Group 4

6 03 Performance Uplift Testing Best Practices 1. When retargeting users, keep your audience targeting as broad as possible. Keep in mind that you should: a. Have a high bid CPM (in the same way you would single-channel retargeting) b. Keep any whitelist as open as possible c. Avoid any specific channel or vertical targeting d. Use the most prevalent ad sizes for the environment in which you re serving (e.g. 320x250 on desktop-web; 320x50 on mobile-web) e. Keep the frequency cap as open as possible 2. Test using an audience segment that already has delivered good results on a single-device campaign so you have a control group with a strong baseline. 3. In the example above we used a tracking pixel on a mobile website to create the audience to be translated. Other ways to create such an audience include adding a tracking pixel to the creatives of a mobile campaign (mobile viewers) or using a tracking SDK (mobile app users). These audiences can also be translated into desktop for retargeting. 4. Testing one campaign at a time helps you pinpoint which types of campaigns are most responsive to cross-device. 5

7 04 Cross-Device Brand Engagement Uplift Testing You can also use uplift testing to measure brand engagement uplift. For instance, some of the largest brands measure the success of their online campaigns based on their target audience reach, as validated by Nielsen OCR or similar measurement tools, which let them port traditional TV measurement online. After the test, you can use Nielsen OCR or similar tools to assess whether your cross-device campaigns reached a higher percentage of your target audience compared to other online campaigns. Now You re Ready To Run Your Own Test! If you are considering running a cross-device campaign, Adbrain will help you get started. We ve worked with many companies to help them take advantage of cross-device. Contact us for more information.

1 Which of the following questions can be answered using the goal flow report?

1 Which of the following questions can be answered using the goal flow report? [A] Are there a lot of unexpected exits from a step in the middle of my conversion funnel? [B] Do visitors usually start my