
When you run a commercial on cable or network TV, air an ad on the radio, or display an ad on a billboard, some metrics allow you to track your advertisement’s performance.
For TV ads and radio commercials, you can see how many times your ad ran, what channels or stations it ran on, and what time of day it ran. For billboards, you can use geofencing techniques around your billboard to see how many people enter the fence with the potential to view your ad.
You can even incorporate a tracking number or tracking URL into the TV commercial, radio ad, or billboard content and monitor the number of times people call the number or visit the URL.
However, those metrics won’t tell you:
- How many people were in the room when your TV commercial ran.
- How many people in the room were paying attention to your TV ad as it played.
- How many people were listening when your radio ad played.
- How many people were in the car when it approached your billboard.
- How many people without GPS- or RFID-equipped devices crossed your billboard’s geofence.
- How many people even noticed your billboard ad as they passed it.
Yes, tracking is possible with traditional advertising. Still, these metrics do not deliver data that is as precise or accurate as the data produced through digital advertising.
What Is Digital Advertising?

Digital advertising is any form of advertising that takes place online or in digital spaces rather than “the real world,” where TV, radio, and print ads live. When a device is connected to the internet or is a part of a wireless mobile network, device users can use apps and visit websites where digital ads can (and will) appear.
The possibilities with digital advertising are wide-reaching and can include:
- Social media marketing on platforms like Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, or LinkedIn Ads
- SEM, or search engine marketing with solutions like Google Ads or Bing Ads
- Video marketing like YouTube Ads or Hulu Ads
- Geofencing advertising
- Email Marketing
And the beauty of all of these options is that each provides detailed metrics showing you just how well your campaign is performing and exactly where to pivot to boost or improve your marketing campaign’s performance.
Why Does Digital Ad Tracking Matter?
Let us answer that question with another question: what is the point of an ad campaign? Whether you said “More sales,” “better brand awareness,” “company growth,” or anything else that benefits your business and your bottom line, you’re right. But how can you know that your ad campaign is working to help you achieve these goals? That’s exactly right—through tracking.
The reasons you would want to track digital ad performance include:
- Determining if your campaign was/is successful
- Determining if the ROI for the campaign is positive or negative
- Determining where to adjust or pivot to optimize your campaign and maximize its performance
- Determining how to strategize your next campaign
Data from your digital advertising campaigns—whether you choose to implement Google ads, Bing ads, social media ads, geofencing campaigns, email marketing campaigns, video ads, or a combination of some or all options—offers you several gifts, as long as you understand what each metric means and how to use the results to your advantage. The metrics you track help you know how your campaign is performing, identify trends, predict trajectories, and take action to switch things up if the data says to do so, which all lead to even better ROIs and campaign results.
Digital Advertising Metrics You Definitely Want to Track
There are a number of metrics you can track from your digital ads—some are universal among all platforms or channels, while others may be specific to a certain type of digital ad campaign.
Total Site Traffic
Your digital ads will (or should) direct users to your website or an ad-specific landing page designed to push your campaign message further and encourage conversion. Tracking this data will show you where the majority of your audience is coming from so that you can know where to shift focus or apply more efforts and gain even more visitors.
There are several ways someone can find your site or page:
- Paid search, like Google ads or Bing ads. If you’ve ever seen search results labeled “sponsored” or “ad” at the top or bottom of Google’s pages, those are paid search ads.
- Paid social, like Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads. If you’ve ever seen posts marked as “sponsored” as you scroll through your feed, those are paid social ads.
- Organic search, or search results that are not labeled as “ad” or “sponsored.”
- Organic social, or a link to your site that’s featured on an organic social post (one that is not labeled “sponsored.”)
- Referral, or links to your site that are featured on another website.
- Email, or a link to your site that is included in an email message.
- Direct, or URLs typed directly into the search bar or accessed through an undefined channel.
- Other, or source types that do not fit any of the abovementioned parameters.
By knowing where your audience comes from, you can know what channels to zero in on moving forward. For instance, if metrics show that the majority of your audience comes from paid search and none come from emails, you can take the resources you were using for email marketing and pour them into your paid search campaign instead, boosting its performance even more.
Impressions
Your impression count shows you how many times your search ads appeared in relevant searches, display ads appeared on third-party sites, or social media ads show up in feeds. Impressions help reveal the quality of your targeting methods and give you an idea of brand awareness.
One thing to note about impressions is that they tell you how many times your ads were displayed, but they do not tell you how many times the ad was noticed or really seen by users. Additionally, the impression count represents the number of times the ad was displayed, not the number of people who encountered the ad. If a user sees the same ad three times, the total impression count will increase by three instead of one.
Reach
Reach is specific to social media ads and similar to impressions, but rather than telling you how many times the ad was displayed, it tells you how many people encountered the ad. So, if a user encounters an ad three times, the reach count will only increase by one. Reach is another metric used to analyze and improve audience targeting.
Clicks
If impressions show you how many times your ad was displayed, clicks show you how many people not only noticed your ad but took action and clicked on it. They show you the number of users who respond positively to your ad’s message and want to look further into your brand or offerings.
Click-Through Rates
Click-through rates tell you the rate at which people who see your ad actually click on it. By dividing your click count by your impression count and multiplying that number by 100, you get a percentage that tells you the rate at which users take action on an ad and click through to the website or landing page.
Cost-Per-Click (CPC) or Cost-Per-View (CPV)
CPC for search or display ads and CPV for YouTube ads tell you how much it costs you for a user to click on your ad or watch your video, either in its entirety if it’s shorter than 30 seconds or for at least 30 seconds if longer. It’s calculated by dividing the total cost of the campaign by the number of clicks received. Through well-planned strategies, there are ways to optimize an ad’s performance while keeping it cost-effective.
Conversions
Conversions track the number of times users complete an activity after clicking through to your website or landing page. Conversions can include filling out and submitting a form, making a phone call, signing up for a newsletter, downloading an app, creating an account, checking out a product demo, or completing a purchase.
Conversions can be divided into two categories: micro conversions and macro conversions. Micro conversions, like filling out a form or signing up for a newsletter, are all designed to continue pushing the user to perform a macro conversion, which is completing a purchase or otherwise becoming a paying client or customer of the company.
Conversion Rates
The conversion rate tells you the percentage of actions, or conversions, users take after clicking through to your website or landing page. By dividing the number of actions by the number of clicks and multiplying by 100, you have a conversion rate at which users complete an action once they land on your site or page.
Engagement Rates
Engagement rates show you how interactive visitors are with your site or landing page. To understand the engagement rate, we need first to define sessions and engaged sessions:
- Session – an interaction with a website or landing page, which is counted once the user clicks through to the site or page.
- Engaged session – an interaction wherein the visitor either stays on the page longer than 10 seconds, performs a micro or macro conversion, or clicks through to additional pages (if on a website).
The engagement rate, specifically, shows the percentage of users who don’t just click through to your page but actually interact with the content they are seeing. By dividing the number of engaged sessions by the number of total sessions and multiplying by 100, you’ll be able to calculate your engagement rate and see just how engaged your audience is with your message and offerings.
Bounce Rates
Bounce rates are essentially the exact opposite of engagement rates. Rather than calculating how many people are engaging with your content, the bounce rate calculates how many people click through to your site or page and then quickly leave without engaging or exploring further. Users who increase the bounce rate are those who do not click through to other pages, do not perform a micro or macro conversion, or leave the page within 10 seconds of landing on it.
The bounce rate is calculated by dividing the number of unengaged sessions by the total number of sessions and multiplying by 100.
It’s considered good or even normal to have a bounce rate around 40% or lower—ideally lower. The higher your bounce rate, the more you should pivot in your campaign by refining your targeting strategies and messaging.
Digital Advertising Metrics Are Such a Gift to Your Marketing Efforts if You Know How to Interpret Them and Use Them to Your Advantage. As Your Partner in Growth, M&R Can Help You Harness the Power That These Metrics Offer to Drive Your Business Even Further. 478-621-4491
The digital strategists at M&R live and breathe digital metrics that show us where to focus, refine, and seize opportunities that benefit our clients’ marketing goals. Whether you want to implement search engine marketing, social media marketing, geofencing, email marketing, video marketing, or any other digital channel, we have the skills, experience, and expertise you want on your side to optimize your digital ad strategies and campaign performances.
Call 478-621-4491 or contact one of our business development managers today to start crafting your digital ad campaign today.
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