Like other digital advertising methods, video marketing offers a variety of performance metrics. Video campaigns in Google Ads, for example, offer insights into views, view rate, average cost per view (CPV), watch time, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), unique users, engagement and more. When advertising your company’s videos on Google Ads, you can tap into these metrics to achieve your marketing goals with greater ease.
Unfortunately, many companies struggle to measure the offline impact of their video marketing campaigns. You know, what actions did the viewer take after they went offline? Did they make a purchase at a store? Did they contact a company representative for more information? These are questions that Google Ads and Facebook Ads can’t answer. So, what can you do to measure offline success?
Think With Google Reveals Neutrogena Case Study
In a recent article, the team at Think With Google unveiled a video marketing case study involving Neutrogena. As one of the country’s leading providers of cosmetic and skincare products, Neutrogena generates a significant amount of revenue through local purchases. But like many other companies, it has struggled to measure the offline impact of its video marketing campaigns.
Think With Google explains that measuring the total impact, including offline impact, of video marketing campaigns is difficult for companies that sell consumer-packaged goods. Since their products are sold through many different channels, companies like Neutrogena can’t see exactly how their video marketing efforts affect their bottom line.
Neutrogena’s Video Marketing Campaign
In an effort to measure the offline impact of video marketing, Neutrogena creates a new video campaign for a line of makeup remover wipes. The skincare and cosmetic company first used Google Insights to identify target keywords and demographics beyond its normal affinities.
For example, Neutrogena found that World Cup fans often used wore makeup when watching or attending World Cup games. Therefore, Neutrogena created a video marketing campaign to target World Cup fans with its line of makeup remover wipes.
In addition to World Cup fans, Neutrogena also created a video marketing campaign to target consumers during Halloween. Millions of Americans wear makeup on Oct. 31 as part of their Halloween costume. By targeting these consumers with relevant and high-quality video ads, Neutrogena was able to reach a new demographic besides its typical target audience of makeup wearers.
After identifying several out-of-the-box keywords and demographics, Neutrogena then used Google’s Direct Mix tool to create 21 custom pre-roll video ads. Each of the 21 pre-roll video ads focused on a specific demographic. After allowing the pre-roll video ads to run, Neutrogena discovered that they reached approximately 13 million households while generating a total of roughly 68 million impressions. But Neutrogena was still left wondering how much the pre-roll video ads impacted their offline performance.
Neutrogena predicted that by using highly customized pre-roll video ads for specific demographics, it would sell more of its makeup remover wipes. The problem, however, was that it didn’t have direct insight into offline performance metrics. This prompted Neutrogena to partner with Nielsen Catalina Solutions to measure the offline performance of its video marketing campaign.
How Neutrogena Overcame This Problem
To measure the offline performance of Neutrogena’s video marketing campaign, Nielsen Catalina Solutions conducted a study that compared a control group of households against a test group of households. The control group consisted of the same demographics targeted by Neutrogena’s pre-roll video ads, whereas the test group consisted of households who actually watched the company’s pre-roll video ads.
Nielsen Catalina Solutions compared the purchasing activities of the control group against the test group to see whether the Neutrogena’s pre-roll video ads were effective at driving offline sales.
“We use our purchase data to categorize all consumers of a brand, from the heavy to the light, from the loyal to the switcher. We then connect this purchase data to the ad exposure so we can measure the results, finding what works and exactly how much it works by measuring incremental sales lift,” explained Leslie Wood, chief research officer at Neutrogena, in the Think With Google article.
The Results
So, how much of an impact did Neutrogena’s pre-roll video ads have on its sales lift? According to the report, Neutrogena experienced nearly a 14% sales lift from the video ads. In other words, the test group of households — households who actually watched the company’s video ads — were 14% more likely to make a purchase than the control group of households.
Neutrogena also explains that approximately 73% of consumers from the increased sales lift were new customers. Less than one-quarter of all sales driven from the video ads came from existing customers.
For Neutrogena, the results were clear: highly customized pre-roll video ads were effective at both boosting sales lift and attracting new customers. Not all companies will experience the same results as Neutrogena, but these findings certainly attest to the multi-channel marketing power of video ads.
