How to measure ads’ real impact with a brand lift study

Every ad campaign has a goal. Reach more people, shift perception or drive action. But how do you know if it worked? 

That’s the purpose of a brand lift study. It’s science, not vibes. A brand lift study is a randomized survey comparing people who saw your ad to those who didn’t. You can measure uplift in awareness, recall, consideration and intent. 

Unlike vanity metrics like impressions, a brand lift study measures the impact of your campaign on your target audience. Real people. Real results you can show your boss. 

After all, impact matters. 

In a world where the average person sees an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 ads per day, attention is fragmented. Impressions are nice, but impact translates into business results. And business results keeps leadership happy. 

Brand lift studies help you prove what’s working. They allow you to optimize creative, refine targeting and justify spend with real data that holds up in a meeting. 

The best part is that these insights don’t just nudge you in the right direction. They tell you exactly which levers moved the needle so you can double down on what works and ghost what didn’t.

In this article, I’ll cover the essential metrics you can measure and walk you through how to run a brand lift study so you feel confident you can achieve measurable results quickly.

So what exactly should you be measuring? These are the signals that indicate whether your campaign achieved more than just screen presence. 

The most common metrics include: 

You can measure each of these metrics with clean survey questions and an adequate sample size. Plus, they sound great in a quarterly recap slide.

Here’s a real example to bring this to life. In winter 2024, men’s personal care brand Dr. Squatch launched a brand lift campaign to support its expansion from direct-to-consumer (DTC) into brick-and-mortar stores. 

The idea? Take a jab at boring soap. 

They collaborated with six comedians to film snippets of their stand-up routines and packaged them as a series called “Your Soap is a Joke.” 

The results? 

• A 22 point lift in ad recall

• A 7.7 point lift in brand association (i.e, “Which brand do you most associate with, 'Your Soap is a Joke?”)

Here’s how they did it: 

• Identified the campaign timeframe: February 3-24, 2024

• Determined the audience: Broad, adults 18+ across Reels, Stories and Feed via both Dr. Squatch and creator pages on Facebook and Instagram.

• Selected the channels: Meta partnership ads featuring the “Soap Box Standup Series.”

What’s next? Use lift data to refine audience targeting, scale high-performing creative and lean into this humor-forward positioning that landed. 

This is more than a funny campaign. It’s a campaign you can measure. 

You can’t optimize what you can’t measure. A brand lift study only works if your structure is solid. It’s a bit like baking, miss a step, and it collapses in the middle and the edges blacken.

Step 1: Define objectives & metrics 

Start by asking what you really want to know. Not just “Did the ad run?” but: “Did it make people think differently? Feel something? Want to take action?” 

For example: “Will ad recall increase by 10% among 18-34 year olds?” Specificity is encouraged. The more precise your expectation, the easier it is to measure meaningful lift. 

Each objective should align with a core metric like: 

• Awareness (Does your audience know your brand?) 

• Recall (Did they remember your ad?) 

• Intent (Are they likely to buy or recommend? 

• Message association (Did they take away the right message?) 

Tip: Choose a maximum of three metrics to measure. Trying to measure everything at once is a fast track to an indecipherable mess. Google allows up to three metrics at once, and I think you’ll agree, they know a thing or two about data.

Step 2: Audience & sampling 

Next, randomly split your audience into two. 

• The sample group gets the ad.

• The control group doesn’t get to enjoy your brilliance. 

The only difference between the two is ad exposure. That’s what gives you clean data. 

You do need a large enough sample size. Plan on at least 2,000 responses per metric. If you’re segmenting by audience, platform or creative variant, plan for 5000+ responses for sound statistics.

Step 3: Design survey questions

This part trips people up. Because writing good survey questions is harder than you think, your questions must be clear, neutral and specific. You don’t want to lead the respondents. 

Great survey questions: 

• “Do you remember seeing an ad for Poppi on Instagram in the past two days?”

• “Which of the following brands have you seen online in the past week?” 

• “Have you heard of [your brand?]” 

• On a scale of 1-5, rate your overall impression of [your brand].”

Simple language and consistent answer choices can help keep your data clean, ensuring your insights are helpful. Don’t ask, “Did you love it?” You’re running research, not fishing for compliments. 

Tip: If you’re testing across multiple ad variants or platforms, include identifiers in the question to track results accurately. (e.g., “Which of the following TikTok ads have you seen recently?”) You’ll thank yourself later. 

Step 4: Launch & collect

Whew! You’ve made it this far. Now you’re ready to go live. 

Launch your survey while your campaign is running. That way, you capture people’s reactions in the moment and not until they’ve forgotten your ad. 

Randomly assign users to: 

• Exposed: Saw the ad

• Control: Didn’t see the ad

Then, collect enough responses to detect meaningful lift. Once the numbers are in, you can put them to work.  

Step 5: Analyze lift & segments 

This is where you turn data into insight. 

First, calculate the brand lift for each metric. Compare the percentage of positive responses in the exposed group vs. your control group. For example, if 48% of your exposed audience remembers seeing your ad, and 36% of your control group says the same, that’s a 12-point lift in recall. Which means your campaign landed. 

From there, you can dig deeper: 

• By audience: Break down by age or gender to see who’s responding best. 

• By platform: Was your message stickier on TikTok than YouTube?

• By creative: Did that off-beat headline outperform your usual polish? 

Tip: This is where you can uncover your hidden hero. Maybe you discover a creative angle that resonated more than expected, or an audience segment that’s ready to scale. 

Once you understand what’s working (and what’s not), you’re ready for the next step.

Step 6: Apply insights & iterate 

Here’s where you look like a hero by turning promising research into great marketing.  

Use your new data to sharpen your next campaign. 

• Refine your message: If recall was strong, but the message association missed the mark. 

• Reallocate spend: If one channel or demographic drove higher intent, double down on it.

• Test new creative: Inspired by a good performance? Try a twist. 

Then test again. 

Brand lift is not a one-and-done exercise. It’s a feedback loop. Top marketing teams conduct follow-up studies to validate your changes and develop a smarter, more responsive ad strategy over time. 

That’s the hallmark of great marketing: Measure, adjust and repeat. 

Fortunately, you can do all of this without waiting weeks, juggling a dozen tools and a spreadsheet that feels like you’re wrangling a destination wedding with 500 guests.

Measuring brand lift doesn’t have to be slow or siloed. With Zappi, you can: 

• Launch studies fast with a rapid, self‑serve setup. There’s no weeks-long back-and-forth or third-party delays.

• Test creative and your segmentation in one platform so you know what’s working and for whom.

• Act quickly with real-time dashboards and built-in analytics, so you can pivot while the campaign is still live (or ideally before too much has already gone into the creative).

With Zappi’s consumer insights platform, you can test early creative and have the data you need within hours.

The best insights come from a solid setup. However, even a small mistake in the planning phase can throw your results off course. Here’s what to get right (and what to watch out for).  

It's one thing to run a brand lift study. It’s another to run one that actually tells you what to do next. It all comes down to structure. Nail your methodology early, and your insights will follow. 

Have clear objectives

Every great study starts with a clear goal. What do you want to learn? What metric will show progress? ❌ “Let’s see what we find.” ✅ “We expect a 10% lift in message recall among our target audience of 25-44 year olds.”

Adequate sample size (min 2 K+ responses) 

You need enough data to measure brand lift. Plan for at least 2000 responses per metric. If you want to segment by age, channel or creative, you’ll need to scale up.  o

❌ Tiny sample sizes that leave more questions than answers. ✅ Follow platform guidelines (e.g., YouTube’s 5.6K minimum for full segmentation). 

Use neutral question phrasing

There’s an art to survey questions. They should be clear, objective and neutral for the best results. 

❌ Did you love this ad? ✅ What was your impression of the ad? 

Use a control group and randomization

If you don’t use a control group, you won’t know the impact. A control group gives you a baseline. 

❌ Don’t compare two exposed groups ✅ Use randomized control groups for cleaner attribution

Conduct ongoing iterations, not a one-off study

The best campaigns use brand lift in cycles. Test, improve and test again. 

❌ Treating brand lift like a postmortem ✅ Building it into a continuous feedback loop 

Brand lift isn’t about checking a box. It’s about proving your creative, sharpening your strategy and knowing what to do next. 

To recap:

• Start with clear objectives 

• Run during the campaign window

• Collect enough data for reliable insights 

• Analyze by audience, channel and creative 

• Act on results, and retest to validate

You can run a brand lift study independently, but with Zappi’s consumer insights platform, it’s faster and easier: 

• Launch in hours instead of weeks 

• Run creative testing and segmentation in one place

• Turn lift data into action while your campaign is still live (or when it’s in the early stage for best optimization)

So skip the guesswork. Launch your brand lift study with Zappi today and see results within days, not weeks.