• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 7, 2011

Essentially selling confidence, Web measurement firms are going to great lengths to illuminate marketers' campaign performance. Vizu Corp. is now offering marketers the ability to benchmark campaign performance against thousands of other ad campaigns measured by the ad analytics firm.

Part of its Ad Catalyst solution, the Brand Lift Norms module, allows advertisers and publishers to compare campaign performance along two key marketing dimensions, according to Vizu CEO Dan Beltramo.

"The first is the branding objective of the campaign, such as awareness, favorability or intent," Beltramo explains. "The second is the advertiser category, such as CPG, retail, entertainment, or automotive."

Vizu's normative data is derived from brand advertising campaigns that have been measured using Vizu's Ad Catalyst solution.

Campaigns are classified into a taxonomy with which Vizu can provide Brand Lift benchmarks for standard ad objectives, and across categories.

Normative data is shown along with other campaign data in Vizu's Web-based interface, available to all customers of Vizu's Ad Catalyst solution.

On average and relative to other advertiser categories, Vizu finds that CPG advertisers are generally driving the greatest Brand Lift with their campaigns -- often 20% to 30% -- with the beverages subcategory leading all others.

Financial services and computer and electronic advertisers are on the other end of the spectrum, delivering the lowest average Brand Lift with their campaigns -- often less than 10% lift.

Awareness and intent were the brand funnel metrics most often measured by advertisers, at two to three times the rate that attitudes, favorability and preference were measured.

Also of note, nearly 26% of campaigns measured did not result in overall Brand Lift prior to optimization.