In 2026, we have access to more data than ever before, but that doesn’t mean that we’re putting it to good use.
Recently, when discussing this topic with a few industry friends, we all came to the same disappointing conclusion: there is a race to the bottom with the use of data in SEA.
In this region, the lion’s share of advertising dollars go to walled gardens, and yet the only way most brands measure these campaigns is by using the solutions provided for ‘free’ from the platform. And, if we’re being honest, platforms marking their own homework should lead to trust issues among anyone with an interest in understanding the success of their campaigns.
An interesting review from Dr Grace Kite suggests it’s worth having an independent measure of success when spending your brand’s money on advertising in walled gardens to make sure you’re getting “the biggest bang for your media-budget buck”. And with budgets tightening, now more than ever, marketers need to understand the true impact of their campaigns.
This brings us to the importance of quality methodologies.
I’ve heard a lot of discussion around Ad Recall being a reliable and robust measurement methodology, and while there is nothing wrong with referencing Ad Recall as a metric of success or creative cut through, as a proxy for exposure it is deeply flawed.
When On Device recently analysed over 2,000 brand lift studies comparing ad recall responses to passive exposure tracking, ad recall was wrong 80% of the time. People say they saw ads they didn’t actually see or forgot ads they did see, meaning exposed and control groups are contaminated from the start.
And when looking specifically at customer bias, we found that customers were 3.1 times more likely to claim they'd seen an ad compared to non-customers, despite both groups having comparable exposure.
Putting it plainly, if you're using ad recall to measure brand lift, roughly 7 out of 10 people in your "exposed" group are likely existing customers. So, although the results may be showing large uplift, this will not be reflected in sales – they’re vanity metrics.
While any serious marketer or researcher would have concerns when it comes to Walled Gardens and Ad Recall-based 'methodologies’, they remain popular measurement options because they do one thing; tick a post-campaign analysis box.
With budgets tightening and every dollar needing to be accounted for, cheaper methods are understandably attractive to marketers; but the reality is, cheap measurement costs you more in the long run.
Choosing cheaper, low-quality measurement is the same as leaving money on the table. While it may generate data, that data is often unreliable, limiting its ability to inform meaningful growth. Over time, this disconnect becomes clear and advertisers begin to question why strong reported ad effectiveness isn’t translating into tangible ROI.
However, if advertisers invest in Brand Lift from a trusted provider using quality methodologies, they won’t just be ticking a box, they’ll be fuelling future media planning and securing ROI.
So, before signing up to a partner for Brand Lift, make sure to look under the hood and ask ‘will this show a true reflection of the effectiveness of the campaign’?