• by Colin Kirkland , January 8, 2025

In a move intended to deepen advertisers’ understanding of what drives sales, market research company Circana has announced the expansion of its “YouTube Sales Lift Solution,” which aims to give consumer packaged goods (CPG) advertisers the ability to measure more ad formats within the social video platform, including Shorts and In-feed.

On the back end, Circana’s measurement software evaluates sales attributed to users exposed to advertising by comparing them to a matched unexposed control group, offering insights into the incremental sales generated by the campaigns. 

Prior to the expansion, Circana’s Sales Lift Solution has been used by advertisers in the CPG segment to measure various ad formats on YouTube, such as bumpers, non-skippable ads, and skippable in-stream ads. 

By integrating Shorts and in-feed ads, Circana wants to provide CPG advertisers with more knowledge on what is driving sales via insights “that break down performance by format, creative, audience, and more.”

Shorts -- YouTube’s TikTok-inspired short-form video offering -- has become the Google-owned company’s most popular content space, ranking as the fastest-growing content type on the platform upon launch, delivering over 50 billion views in the app per day. 

The move to bring expanded marketing insights into the offering is important because the area is key for brand partnerships, as YouTube recently launched a new process that invites Shorts creators to send advertisers requests for potential partnerships. 

Circana is also trying to build out its own marketing mix modeling (MMM) solutions.