Choosing the right KPIs for your Programmatic campaigns

Find examples of common KPIs in Programmatic campaigns and read our guidelines to track and optimise your campaigns in an efficient manner.

Importance of KPIs in Programmatic campaigns

What is a KPI?

A KPI is a Key Performance Indicator used to track important quantifiable metrics in Programmatic campaigns or, in general, in business environments: impressions, CPC, CPL, ROAS, etc.

Choosing the right KPIs for your campaigns allows you to make data-driven decisions such as campaign optimisation, budget increase or decrease, change of targeting or ad formats.

KPIs are also crucial and really useful for QBRs (Quarterly Business Review), YoY reports (Year-over-Year reports), PCAs (Post-Campaign Analytics) and case studies. If you work in a marketing agency, tracking KPIs may help you pitch new ad formats to your clients and boost campaigns budget increases.

Basically, KPIs indicate if your Programmatic campaigns are successful or not.

Understanding your Programmatic campaign goals

Before choosing KPIs for your campaigns, you have to understand what the goals of the campaign are. Try to stick to only a few goals so you will only have 1 to 3 KPIs to track. If you don’t, you will end up with so much data to track and analyse that optimisation will become very complicated and ineffective.

One popular method used to define goals and choosing KPIs in marketing is the SMART method: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Example of the SMART method for this matter:

Specific: increase the number of sales.
Measurable: track to the number of sales (conversions) with a conversion rule.
Attainable: it’s achievable with an omnichannel Programmatic campaign (mobile interscroller + DOOH for example).
Relevant: an increase in conversions will fit with the wider business goals.
Time-bound: tracking the sale number each month.

Remember to prioritise your goals and KPIs before setting up your Programmatic campaigns and launching them.

For instance, if your goal is to increase the number of conversions on your website, make sure to set up a performance campaign that will track conversion number. And not a campaign where only impressions, clicks and CTR are tracked…

If your goal is to increase profit, your KPIs could be CPC and CPA. The lower your average CPC and CPA are, the more profit you will make.

There are three main goals in the marketing world: awareness, consideration, decision.

These marketing goals may have different names, depending on where you live or which platform you use:

Awareness = branding.
Consideration = lead generation.
Decision = sales or acquisition.

When using DSPs, the two main types of Programmatic campaigns are branding vs performance. And performance is then split into 2 subcategories: lead generation or consideration (mid-funnel) and sales or decision (lower funnel).

Programmatic campaigns on SSPs are mainly focused on consideration and decision (acquisition). That’s why it’s important to choose the right Programmatic platforms before launching campaigns.

All the mentioned goals are regrouped in what we call the “marketing funnel” or “sales funnel”:

Awareness
Consideration
Decision

You can associate each step of the sales funnel with specific KPIs*.

Awareness: CPM, impressions, completion rate.
Consideration: clicks, CPCV, CTR, CPC, bounce rate.
Decision: CPA, ROAS, conversion rate, conversions.

*Note that some KPIs may be relevant through the entire sales funnel.

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Impressions

Impressions are one of the most basic KPIs to track. The number of impressions corresponds to the number of times your ad has been displayed or seen.

For some ad formats such as videos or display banners, viewability plays a role in the number of impressions calculated. For instance, for billboard ads, IAB registers an impression only if at least 30% of the ad pixels are seen during 1 second.

In other rare cases, an ad might register an impression without being seen by a user.

Impressions are mainly used in brand awareness campaigns.

Attention! Impressions don’t mean reach. Reach represents the number of persons who could potentially see your ad while impressions represent the number of times an ad has been delivered. A person may see your ad multiple times.

CTR

CTR means Click-Through Rate. To calculate this metric, divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions and then multiply the quotient by 100. A CTR is expressed as a percentage.

CTR is a KPI used for awareness and consideration strategies. It’s also handy for measuring A/B test performance for wordings or creatives in general.

A high CTR means that users tend to click often on your ad when they see it: it means they might like the service or product you are advertising, the wording, the visual, the format. Know that your average CTR will depend on several factors such as ad formats, devices, targeted audiences, time of the day or day of the week.

Make sure to use an efficient wording, the right creative and target the right audience.

A low CTR might indicate an ad fatigue from your audience, a wrong targeting strategy or a high ad frequency. To know what your ad frequency is, divide the number of impressions by the number of unique users (UUs). You will then know how many times, on average, a user sees your ad.

Instead of CTR, some advertisers use clicks as their KPI. These two KPIs are related so pick the one which brings the most value to you.

CPM and CPC

CPM means Cost-Per Mille (impressions). To calculate a campaign CPM: divide the total campaign spend by the number of delivered impressions then multiply the dividend by 1,000.

For example, if you spent $5,000 and delivered your ad 1,000,000 times, your CPM is $5 because (5,000/1,000,000)X1000=5.

A low CPM means you’ll be able to deliver a large number of impressions and reach a lot of people. A high CPM, on the other end, will restrict your ad delivery if you have a small marketing budget.

It’s important to know that in DOOH campaigns, CPM means “the number of people who see your ad every time it appears on the screen”.

CPM is mainly used for brand awareness Programmatic campaigns. It varies a lot depending on the market, the targeting and the ad format you use.

CPC corresponds to the Cost Per Click of your campaign. Basically, this KPI indicates how much you pay per click. The CPC formula is total campaign spend divided by the number of clicks your campaign delivered.

If you use CPC as your KPI in mobile app campaigns, be careful because clicks might be accidental with this ad format. Check your bounce rate and conversion rate too, before considering any optimisation change.

CPC is often used as KPI for mid-funnel goals such as consideration.

Conversions

Conversions are great KPIs for performance Programmatic campaigns. A conversion, or lead, represents a specific action done by a user after seeing or hearing an ad. It can be a download, buying a specific product, calling a phone number, scanning a QR code (for CTV to mobile, DOOH to mobile or DOOH to store strategies), joining a loyalty program or simply clicking a link.

For lead gen campaigns, conversions represent a threshold to reach within a specific timeframe (a week or a month, for example).

CPL or CPA

CPL and CPA are important KPIs for performance campaigns. These are ones of the most used KPIs in digital advertising.

CPL means Cost Per Lead while CPA stands for Cost Per Action. An action can be a lead or a conversion so make sure to understand what your Programmatic campaign objectives are beforehand.

To calculate your CPL or CPA, take the total campaign spend and divide it by the number of conversions.

The lowest your CPL or CPA, the more profit you will make.

To decrease this KPI, make sure your targeting is relevant and analyse the following metrics: conversion rate, bounce rate, time on site, number of conversions per ad, etc.

Know that conversion rate can be used as KPI to A/B test landing pages or CTA (Click To Action) buttons.

ROI and ROAS

ROI and ROAS are crucial KPIs when profit is at stake. As you can imagine, these KPIs are mainly used for performance campaigns.

ROI stands for Return On Investment while ROAS means Return On Ad Spend. ROI is usually calculated as a percentage while ROAS may be shown as a multiplier (3.0), a percentage (300%) or a ratio (3:1). In this example, it would mean that you earn $3 for each dollar you spend.

A ROAS below 1 means that you are losing money: your ads don’t bring enough customers or sales. Or the average basket value of your online shop is too low.

When using ROI or ROAS as KPIs for your Programmatic campaigns, your goal is to finish with a ROI or ROAS higher than 100% or a ROAS higher than 1 or 1:1.

Completion rate and views

Completion rate and views are mainly used for video (VCR, Video Completion Rate) or audio ads (ACR which stands for Audio Completion Rate). These KPIs are often used for awareness goals.

Depending on the type of ad videos you are running (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, display or native videos), you could count as a view each time a video is seen for a few seconds or in its entirety.

CPCV may be used as KPI too; CPCV stands for Cost Per Completed View. It represents the amount of money you pay every time a user watched a video in full.

Note that completion rates are also important in performance campaigns, for lead gen forms, for example.

Open rates and share rates are KPIs mainly used by advertisers for mailing campaigns. These campaigns work for both branding and performance goals.

Indeed, mail ads help increase traffic to your website, boost your ROI and grow customer engagement and loyalty to your brand. This ad format also reduces cart abandonment when set up properly.

The open rate gives an indication on how interested your audience is (how many people are opening an email); the share rate lets you know how many times your audience shared your mail, your offer, your ad, with their contacts (by forwarding it, for example).

Store visits

Store visits are a useful KPI to pick for Drive to Store or DOOH campaigns.

Thanks to a mobile ID, a loyalty program or a promotional code, you can track who is coming to your store after seeing or hearing an ad of yours. Analysing the data will allow you to perfect your targeting and how you advertise to new or current customers.

To go further

Now that you know why KPIs are important and how to choose KPIs for your Programmatic campaigns, would you like to learn which KPI to pick for which type of ad formats?

Or maybe you want to manage an omnichannel campaign like a pro?

Join our Programmatic Online Training now and become an expert. Learn tips and tricks to save time and impress your clients and your employer.

One of the perks of joining the course is that Ted Jordan, our Programmatic specialist, will help you set up your first campaign.

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