The Incredible Sales Lift Power of a Custom Meta-Study

By Lisa Kerins, VP, Publisher Sales and Business Development, NCSolutions

What’s the most effective way to drive success for your platform’s advertisers? On the surface, the answer seems straightforward: Provide sound advice and best practices backed by solid insights to improve the advertiser’s ability to drive sales and achieve their goals.

After thousands of campaigns, publishers have insider information about what strategies and tactics are most likely to improve the effectiveness of advertising on their platforms. The challenge is that every advertiser’s situation is unique, and generic blanket recommendations won’t suffice. Brand A, for example, might have a goal to increase sales lift among New Buyers. Brand B might be focused on improving return on advertising spend (ROAS). Product, category, creative and target audience are only a few of the variables. Strategies and tactics have to be customized to each situation for campaigns to deliver the right results.

That’s why your advice will have a greater impact if you can tell your advertiser what actually works based on an analysis of past campaigns that closely match their situation. Using your historical campaign data can yield valuable insights about the strategies and tactics most likely to deliver the desired results.

In a Custom Meta-Study, publishers can aggregate and evaluate past campaigns using a variety of metrics, such as categories, total incremental sales, penetration lift, purchase cycle, types of buyers, seasonality and much more. The analysis will enable you to answer advertisers’ questions, and provide recommendations to improve campaign results. When times are good, sharing best practices will maximize the potential of campaigns. In a downturn (including the current pandemic), when clients are even more eager for your guidance, your expertise becomes even more valuable. A Custom Meta-Study will allow you to answer advertiser questions about how products should be positioned or what type of campaign is most likely to influence target buyers. 

For instance, NCS has conducted several Custom Meta-Studies for publishers, who used the analysis to guide their advertisers as they set their strategy and determined which tactics to employ. 

What can advertisers learn?? The following examples illustrate just a few of the strategies publishers have been able to recommend to their advertisers, based on an analysis of historical campaign data.

A Meta-Study customized to your platform supports your recommendations and illustrates the benefits of advertising on your platform.