Partner Insights

How Engaged Impressions maximize TV advertising performance

EDO’s TV ad impression metrics are rooted in ad-driven consumer engagement behaviors, and can accurately evaluate impression quality and predict future sales.

In the U.S., TV and CTV advertising spend is projected to reach nearly reach nearly $100 billion by 2027. But how do you measure the impact of those ads?

It’s been a top priority for marketers in recent decades to measure the quality of TV impressions. But as the TV outcomes measurement company EDO notes in its recent whitepaper, the right metrics have long been elusive.

Instead, marketers have been left with broad audience reach metrics that provide little insight into whether the impressions they’ve bought are actually moving consumers closer to purchase. While marketers generally agree that media quality should be measured based on each TV impression’s probability of generating an incremental sale, measuring that probability is another story.

To fill this gap in effective measurement tools focused on the quality of TV impressions, EDO started studying metrics rooted in ad-driven consumer engagement behaviors. In conjunction with Nielsen data, EDO’s measurement tools can accurately evaluate impression quality and predict future sales. This research is the subject of EDO’s whitepaper, “The Power of Engaged Impressions,” as well as a recent MediaVillage article from the Emmy Award-winning advertising research leader Bill Harvey.

A new way to optimize TV ad performance

EDO and Nielsen’s Engaged Impressions is a new metric that measures the true quality of an impression and corresponds with a TV ad’s impact on future sales. You can see EDO’s basic engagement methodology for linear TV ads below, but here’s the gist: A TV ad airing happens, and then EDO’s ACR technology logs the ad and its metadata (including the program, network, creative, or impressions). EDO’s Ad Engage platform queries EDO’s outcomes database, including search activity, in minute-by-minute increments to track the measurement of branded search that follows the ad.

Each ad’s search Engagement Volume (EV) is measured by the red area under the search spike below. The spike is divided by the number of impressions in the ad, determined with Nielsen measurements, to arrive at the ad’s Engagement Rate (ER), which is a metric of an ad’s scale-adjusted impression quality.

By combining its brand search engagement metrics with Nielsen’s state-of-the-art measurement of impression quantity, EDO sought to find a way to accurately predict sales lift and drive improved linear TV optimization results. This combined approach is called Balanced Optimization. As its name suggests, it balances three major factors in optimizing media plan return on investment:

Media Weight (Number of Impressions)
Media Quality (Consumer Engagement)
Media Cost

EDO and Nielsen’s metrics get results: For individual clients in private proofs of concept, EDO’s search-based TV efficacy metrics have shown they can predict short-term sales movement. EDO has also shown the direct links between share of search and market share growth in public research efforts, working with the U.K.-based IPA research group.

How Engaged Impressions generated a 280% improvement in consumer engagement

If a brand optimizes only using CPMs and impressions, how does that compare to a balanced optimization strategy that uses a combination of CPMs, impressions, and EDO’s metric of impression quality (ER)? That’s what EDO sought to determine.

EDO compared two basic optimization strategies over the same time period during the first half of 2024 for one leading client, using different optimization target metrics:

1. Nielsen impressions and CPMs only

a. Maximizing total impressions while keeping weekly budget constant

2. Nielsen and EDO combined and CPM

a. Maximizing Engaged Impressions — a metric inclusive of both campaign scale and impression quality — while keeping weekly budget constant

Each model showed estimates of incremental traffic lift, as well as the incremental dollar value of TV ads. The results were eye-popping — while the standard CPM and impression strategy garnered a 5% gain in incremental web traffic from linear advertising, the Nielsen and EDO combined optimization strategy saw a total gain in incremental web traffic of about 19%, or nearly four times the CPM minimization strategy. In other words, this advertiser saw a 280% greater improvement in incremental website visits using EDO and Nielsen’s Balanced Optimization model.

Want to get more insights on EDO’s strategy and learn how to maximize your TV advertising performance? Download EDO’s white paper and see how you can harness the power of Engaged Impressions.

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