Measure whether your ads actually changed brand perception
A Brand Lift Survey (BLS) compares two groups — one that saw the ad, one that didn't. The difference is the causal effect of your campaign on brand perception.
What a Brand Lift Survey measures
A Brand Lift Survey measures the causal impact of an ad campaign on brand perception. It compares responses to identical survey questions across two statistically matched groups.
Control Group
Users eligible to see the ad who were randomly withheld from exposure during the campaign. Their responses establish the baseline.
Exposed Group
Users who were served the ad during the campaign. Their responses capture the effect of exposure.
The difference between the two groups is the lift — the only widely accepted way to attribute a shift in brand metrics to a specific campaign.
BLS run natively inside the Adello Mobile DSP
The survey unit is served to users drawn from the same targeting pool as the campaign, split into control and exposed groups before delivery. This keeps both groups comparable, which is the main precondition for interpretable lift. Because the survey runs in the same mobile environment as the ad, response rates stay high.
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Control Positive Rate | Baseline response rate among unexposed users |
| Exposed Positive Rate | Response rate among users who saw the campaign |
| Absolute Lift | Percentage-point difference between exposed and control |
| Relative Lift | Proportional increase (absolute lift ÷ control rate) |
| Headroom Lift | Share of remaining growth opportunity captured by the campaign |
Four reasons BLS is standard practice now
Mobile advertising and programmatic advertising reporting usually stops at impressions, clicks, and CPM. Those metrics describe delivery. They do not describe brand effect.
Control group separates effect from coincidence
"Awareness up 5%" in a tracker dashboard without a control group could come from the campaign, from seasonality, from a PR event, or from a competitor mistake. The data cannot distinguish. A BLS isolates the campaign effect.
CTR and CPM optimize the wrong thing
Without lift data, budget gets reallocated on CTR and CPM. These metrics reward cheap inventory and direct-response creative. Formats that move perception rarely win that comparison.
Privacy-resilient measurement
Deterministic user-level tracking has narrowed in iOS and Android environments. Multi-touch attribution coverage has dropped. Campaign-level lift, which is what a BLS produces, is less affected.
Segment data directs the next spend
Lift broken down by age, gender, or region shows which cohort is already saturated and where headroom remains. That is the basis for creative refreshes rather than continued spend against already-converted bands.
What an Adello BLS report looks like
After the campaign closes, you receive a lift report with the blocks shown below. The numbers come from a real mobile advertising campaign (brand names anonymized) and show how lift is presented overall and broken down by segment.
1. Overall summary
Positive Rate
Positive Rate
Lift (pp)
Lift
Lift
2. Lift by age
How to read it: 21–24 showed the strongest relative lift at +56.25%. 55+ was already near the ceiling and delivered only +5.86%. This breakdown tells you which cohort to prioritize on the next flight.
Frequently asked questions
When should a BLS be set up?
Before launch. The measurement design has to be set up at targeting time so the control and exposed groups can be held separate. Retrofitted surveys lose most of the causal strength of the method.
How is absolute lift different from relative lift?
Absolute lift is the raw percentage-point difference between exposed and control. Relative lift divides that difference by the control rate, showing the proportional improvement. Both should be reported together.
What does headroom lift indicate?
What share of the remaining growth opportunity the campaign captured. A brand at 80% baseline awareness has structurally less headroom than one at 20%. The metric makes absolute lift comparable in context.
Measure the effect, not just the delivery
Build a BLS into your next campaign. We set up control and exposed groups at targeting time and deliver lift reports with segment breakdowns.