Measurement · also called Brand lift study, conversion lift study
Lift study
A lift study is an experiment measuring how much a campaign changed an outcome, such as awareness or sales, by comparing exposed people with a similar unexposed group.
Lift studies put incrementality into practice. The audience is split, usually randomly, into a test group that is eligible to see the ads and a control group, or holdout group, that is not. After the campaign, the difference between the groups is the lift.
Brand lift studies survey both groups on metrics like ad recall, awareness and purchase intent. Conversion or sales lift studies compare actual behaviour: purchases, sign-ups, store visits or app installs, often matched through first-party or retailer data in a data clean room. Big platforms such as Google, Meta and Amazon offer built-in lift tools, and independent research firms run them across media.
Good lift studies need randomisation, enough sample size, a clear pre-registered metric and a long enough window. Platform-run studies are convenient but are the seller grading its own homework, so many advertisers also run independent geo tests or third-party studies. Results feed into marketing mix modeling calibration and budget decisions.
Think of it like this
A lift study is like a clinical trial for an ad: one group gets the medicine, one gets a placebo, and you measure the difference.
An example
A soft-drink brand runs a brand lift study in Nigeria: ad recall is 38% in the exposed group versus 22% in the control group, a 16-point lift.
Related terms
Incrementality
Incrementality is the extra result, such as sales, installs or visits, caused by advertising that would not have happened without it, usually measured by comparing exposed and unexposed groups.
Holdout group
A holdout group is a randomly chosen portion of an audience deliberately not shown a campaign's ads, used as a baseline to measure the ads' true incremental effect.
Marketing mix modeling (MMM)
Marketing mix modeling (MMM) is a statistical method that estimates how much each marketing channel, plus factors like price and seasonality, contributed to sales, using aggregate historical data.
Attribution
Attribution is the process of assigning credit for a conversion, such as a sale, sign-up or install, to the ads, channels or touchpoints that a customer encountered beforehand.
Data clean room
A data clean room is a secure environment where companies combine and analyse their customer data together, getting aggregated insights or audiences without exposing each other's raw personal data.
Sources: IAB guidelines