Five years ago, the only met­ric that seemed to mat­ter when eval­u­at­ing the suc­cess of a YouTube video cam­paign was how many “views” it got. Today, mar­keters need to know four oth­er key met­rics to under­stand if a video cam­paign is suc­cess­ful. They are: brand lift, web­site traf­fic, con­ver­sions, and return on mar­ket­ing invest­ment (ROMI).

For­tu­nate­ly, dig­i­tal mar­keters now have the tools they need to mea­sure whichev­er met­ric is most rel­e­vant to their goals. These tools include the replace­ment of YouTube Insight with YouTube Ana­lyt­ics in Novem­ber 2011; the re-imag­in­ing of Google Ana­lyt­ics for today’s mul­ti-screen, mul­ti-device world with the announce­ment that “Uni­ver­sal Ana­lyt­ics” was out of beta in April 2014; as well as the revamp of Videos report­ing to offer more YouTube Ana­lyt­ics-style per­for­mance met­rics right in AdWords for video in Decem­ber 2014.

Here are the four new met­rics that mea­sure what mat­ters in video mar­ket­ing.

1. Brand Lift

Two years before Susan Woj­ci­c­ki was named YouTube CEO in Feb­ru­ary 2014, she intro­duced a new tool, Brand Lift sur­veys in AdWords in Feb­ru­ary 2012. Brand Lift sur­veys are pow­ered by Google Con­sumer Sur­veys, which was launched in April 2012, and mea­sure the effec­tive­ness of your video cam­paigns using sur­vey and search data col­lect­ed from your tar­get audi­ence. Results are accu­rate, occur in real-time, and don’t cost any­thing extra.

Adver­tis­ers are able to set up and run Brand Lift sur­veys along­side their cam­paigns with­out any addi­tion­al tag­ging, third-par­ty set-up, or fees, all from with­in AdWords for video. Here’s how they work:

• In AdWords, an adver­tis­er designs a basic sur­vey from a list of tem­pla­tized ques­tions about pur­chase intent, brand aware­ness, and oth­er com­mon cat­e­gories.
• Then they launch their video cam­paign.
• Auto­mat­i­cal­ly, one group of users will see dis­play ads from the advertiser’s cam­paign, fol­lowed short­ly after­wards by the sur­vey. A sec­ond, sim­i­lar group will not be shown the video ads, but will receive the same sur­vey.
• Google com­pares the aggre­gat­ed and anony­mous data from the two groups of respon­dents and gives it to adver­tis­ers to mea­sure the impact of their cam­paigns on brand aware­ness, ad recall, and brand inter­est.

2. Website Traffic

In Novem­ber 2012, YouTube launched asso­ci­at­ed web­site anno­ta­tions, which enabled video mar­keters to link to any of their asso­ci­at­ed web­sites direct­ly from their videos. In March 2015, YouTube intro­duced cards, an evo­lu­tion of anno­ta­tions.

Cards can inform view­ers about your asso­ci­at­ed web­site, mer­chan­dise, fundrais­ing, fan fund­ing, anoth­er video, or a playlist. They are avail­able any­time dur­ing the video and, unlike asso­ci­at­ed web­site anno­ta­tions, cards work on mobile devices. Because cards work across mobile and desk­top and give video mar­keters more flex­i­bil­i­ty to share what they want, YouTube’s goal is to have these even­tu­al­ly replace anno­ta­tions.

In YouTube Ana­lyt­ics, the Anno­ta­tions report in YouTube Ana­lyt­ics pro­vides infor­ma­tion on the per­for­mance of video anno­ta­tions and gives engage­ment infor­ma­tion such as click-through rate and close rate for anno­ta­tions on videos, while the Cards report gives you infor­ma­tion on how view­ers are inter­act­ing with cards on your videos on desk­top, mobile, and tablet. Togeth­er, these reports now make web­site traf­fic a real­is­tic met­ric for a YouTube video cam­paign.

3. Conversions

AdWords for video and Google Ana­lyt­ics enable video mar­keters to mea­sure con­ver­sions. A con­ver­sion is an activ­i­ty on your site that is impor­tant to the suc­cess of your busi­ness. These include:

• Micro con­ver­sions, such as email signups, cre­at­ed accounts, and PDF down­loads, and oth­er activ­i­ties that often pre­cede a pur­chase.
• Macro con­ver­sions, such as sales trans­ac­tions.

Once you set up con­ver­sion track­ing, you can keep an eye on some impor­tant sta­tis­tics to help you mea­sure whether your video ad cam­paign is suc­cess­ful:

• Num­ber of con­ver­sions and cost-per-con­ver­sion: You can assign mon­e­tary val­ues to your con­ver­sions when set­ting up track­ing to get detailed rev­enue infor­ma­tion in your reports. Review­ing your total num­ber of con­ver­sions and the val­ue of these con­ver­sions can help you decide if you should increase your bud­get or make changes to your ad groups to attract more tar­get­ed vis­i­tors.
• Con­ver­sion rate: This helps you track how many clicks lead to valu­able actions like a sale or signup. The con­ver­sion rate list­ed in your account is the num­ber of con­ver­sions divid­ed by the num­ber of ad clicks.
• See how cus­tomers inter­act with your ads across devices: Some­times your cus­tomers click on your ad on one device, and then make their pur­chase on anoth­er device. These are called cross-device con­ver­sions, and you can see them in the Esti­mat­ed Total Con­ver­sions col­umn in your AdWords account.

4. ROMI

Whether you’re using YouTube mar­ket­ing or AdWords for video to increase con­ver­sions such as sales, leads, or down­loads, you’ll want to mea­sure your return on mar­ket­ing invest­ment (ROMI). It is the con­tri­bu­tion to prof­it attrib­ut­able to mar­ket­ing (net of mar­ket­ing spend­ing), divid­ed by the mar­ket­ing “invest­ed” or risked.

ROMI is not like oth­er return-on-invest­ment (ROI) met­rics because mar­ket­ing isn’t the same kind of invest­ment. Instead of mon­ey that is “tied” up in plants and inven­to­ries (often con­sid­ered cap­i­tal expen­di­ture or CAPEX), mar­ket­ing spend­ing is typ­i­cal­ly expensed in the cur­rent peri­od (oper­a­tional expen­di­ture or OPEX).

A nec­es­sary step in cal­cu­lat­ing ROMI is the esti­ma­tion of the incre­men­tal sales attrib­ut­able to mar­ket­ing. Here’s the for­mu­la:

Return on Mar­ket­ing Invest­ment (ROMI) = [Incre­men­tal Rev­enue Attrib­ut­able to Mar­ket­ing ($) * Con­tri­bu­tion Mar­gin (%) — Mar­ket­ing Spend­ing ($)] / Mar­ket­ing Spend­ing ($)

Usu­al­ly, mar­ket­ing spend­ing will be deemed as jus­ti­fied if the ROMI is pos­i­tive.

With these four key met­rics, mar­keters will be able to mea­sure what mat­ters, enabling them to get the strate­gic insights they need to make their video cam­paigns more cus­tomer-cen­tric as well as enable their brands to be vis­i­ble and per­sua­sive in the moments that real­ly mat­ter.