What is brand lift?
Brand lift is the measurable change in how people think about a brand after seeing an ad campaign. It compares an exposed group, people who saw the ads, with a control group who did not, and reports the difference in metrics like ad recall, awareness, consideration, favorability and purchase intent. The gap between the two groups is the lift.
Brand lift is used for upper-funnel campaigns where clicks and conversions do not tell the full story, such as video, connected TV and awareness display.
How brand lift is measured
Most brand lift studies follow the same steps:
Split the audience: the platform or a research partner randomly holds out part of the target audience from seeing the ads. That holdout is the control group.
Run the campaign: the exposed group sees ads as normal.
Survey both groups: short surveys ask questions such as which brands the person remembers seeing advertised, or how likely they are to buy.
Compare results: the difference in positive answers between the groups is the lift.
A simple example: if 20% of the control group recall your ad and 26% of the exposed group do, absolute lift is 6 percentage points. Relative lift is 6 / 20 = 30%. Studies also report statistical significance, because small samples can show differences that are just noise.
Survey-based studies need enough impressions and responses to read reliably, so platforms usually set a minimum budget or audience size before a study can run.
Why brand lift matters
Awareness campaigns are often judged on proxies like impressions, reach or completed views. Those show delivery, not effect. Brand lift answers whether the ads actually changed what people remember or intend to do.
It shows which creative, format or audience moves perception most.
It gives a defensible result for campaigns with no direct conversion path.
It helps balance budget between brand building and performance activity.
Results are most useful when the study is planned before launch, with clear questions and one main variable to test, so the lift can be tied to a real decision.
Brand lift has limits. Survey answers are stated intent, not behavior, and results can vary with question wording and sample quality.
Brand lift vs incrementality
Both use a control group, so they are easy to mix up. Brand lift measures changes in attitudes through surveys. Incrementality testing measures changes in behavior, such as extra sales, sign-ups or site visits that would not have happened without the ads. Many advertisers use brand lift for awareness campaigns and incrementality tests for performance campaigns, and sometimes both on the same flight.
Brand lift with AdGeeks
For awareness and video campaigns on DV360 and Amazon DSP, AdGeeks traders can plan brand lift measurement where the platform offers it and the budget meets study thresholds. We keep creative and targeting stable while a study runs, so the result is clean, and read the findings alongside reach and frequency data.
