Digital advertising is constantly changing and evolving. New trends and technology change the game at an astonishing rate. Keeping track of your native advertising campaigns can be challenging.

If you’re reading this article, you’re probably already aware that measuring advertising campaigns is tough. These problems will be far worse if you don’t establish a method to track and measure your campaigns and clearly define which specific metrics you should keep an eye on.

Why tracking native advertising metrics is fundamental

You should track marketing and advertising campaigns of every kind. Measurement lets you know how campaigns are performing and gives you the feedback you need to adjust and fine-tune each ad.

Whatever type of native campaign you're running, if you're not collecting and analyzing relevant metrics, you're managing your ad investments with blinders on.

Identifying advertisement metrics is crucial. Metrics provide a tangible way to:

1. Track your marketing efforts
2. Understand how your campaign is progressing toward specific key performance indicators (KPIs)
3. Identify the channels that produce a strong return on investment (ROI)

Building a list of key advertising metrics lets you understand your campaigns. It allows you to take a data-driven approach to decision-making. On top of that, it gives you trust that you are investing your native advertising budget wisely.

When you understand your campaigns, you’re in control. You can adjust your copy and budget and feel confident that these changes will improve your bottom line.

This article will list the four essential metrics you need to track for a successful campaign. Note all of them down because they will act as a metrics checklist for measuring your native advertising.

Most important native advertising metrics to track

Most important native advertising metrics to track

#1. Click-through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is the most popular metric to evaluate the performance of a native advertising campaign. It shows the percentage of people who see your ad and click through to the post-click landing page.

A handy thing to do when evaluating this metric is to compare it with the reach and impressions of your ad. If the CTR is too low compared to the reach or impressions, you might have a problem. For example, a low CTR can tell you that when your potential audience sees your ads, they’re not engaged enough to take the next step.

If you run into this problem, running A/B tests on various ads is a good idea. These tests can change things like headlines, copy, and visuals, to see which combinations are more likely to grab your audience’s attention.

The formula for calculating CTR is:

CTR = (total measured clicks / total measured impressions) x 100.

Defining a good CTR depends on several factors. Some of the things you need to consider are your product, industry, and even the publications you choose. For example, your CTR will be lower if you’re targeting a niche audience but using a general or non-specialist host website.

Pro Tips: What to do when your CTR is too low

1) Always remember to include CTAs (Call To Action) directed at your readers. Ensure it’s clear and compelling so that the audience can't help but click through

2) Always use the correct image sizes. Visuals are a great way to capture attention and increase CTR. See ReadPeak’s image size here.

3) Try to change and improve the ad title and text. These two elements represent the most significant reason your ad fails to get a high CTR.

Always remember to leverage 1-2  keywords within the title. While in the main text, try to present the service/product you offer as the solution to the problem your audience is experiencing.

If you are struggling to achieve the desired results from your native campaign, check out this article to learn 6 of the most effective ways to optimise your campaign.

#2. Conversion Rates

Conversion rates measure the number of people who have seen your ad that completes a particular goal. Each ad you build should have a purpose: to get the target audience to perform a specific action.

Native ads can have a variety of objectives. A conversion can be much more than just buying a product or service. With native advertising, you can target goals like:

• Subscriptions
• Downloading an eBook or whitepaper
• Signups for live events/webinars

Conversion rates are an essential native advertising metric because they allow advertisers to assess each ad’s ability to influence particular actions.

You can calculate conversion rates with the following formula:

Conversion rate = (total attributed conversions / total # of clicks/visits) x100.

Improving conversion rates depends a lot on your product or service. Some valuable tips that you can use are:

• Run A/B tests on various ads, testing headlines, creatives, and CTAs.
• Look at the language that you use in your ads. Are you speaking to your customer with the words they use to describe their pain points?
• Create custom landing pages for each ad so that your audience gets what they’re looking for
• Analyze how you are targeting your audience and ensure you choose publications that are a good fit
• Use strong lead magnets if you are trying to capture email addresses
• Leverage social proof in your articles to convince prospects that you’re business is worthy of their trust
• Ensure your headlines and articles accurately represent your offering. Don’t use clickbait or misleading claims

#3. Viewable Impressions

Viewable impressions refer to an advertising impression that appears on screen. Now you might wonder, how is this metric different from “Impressions”? According to the International Advertising Bureau (IAB), a viewable impression must be on 50% or more of the screen for at least one second. Whatsmore, it must be on a browser that is being actively used.

This metric is important because it allows you to measure coverage in much greater detail.  When you measure viewable impressions, you have an even more precise analysis of the performance of your native campaigns.

Additionally, it is a very relevant metric when combined with other measurements like CTR. For example, as previously explained, it can be helpful to understand the effectiveness of your native campaign.

But how can you unlock this crucial data? Our native advertising platform, Readpeak, provides a dashboard that gives you a complete and detailed picture of your native campaigns. Alongside other measurements, our dashboard allows you to get an accurate figure on viewable impressions.

#4. Bounce rate

Bounce rate represents the number of people who have visited your site but left before interacting or engaging with it. It’s a key metric because it allows you to assess the quality of the traffic each campaign is driving to your website.
If you have a high bounce rate, it means that even if you’re driving a high volume of traffic to your site, something is seriously wrong.

If you notice many people “bouncing” from your website, it’s probably down to one of a few things. For starters, it could be an audience-targeting issue. If users leave straight after they reach their site, you are likely targeting an audience that isn’t interested in your product or service.

Another reason for high bounce rates is slow page loading speeds. Data from Google suggests that 53% of sites are abandoned if they take longer than 3 seconds to load.

Of course, there are some exceptions. If you have an article or blog-based website, a high bounce rate could indicate that users found precisely what they were looking for on the first page.

It’s essential that you measure your bounce rate. If it’s not as low as you hoped, you also need to understand the reasons behind it. You can calculate bounce rate with the following formula:

Bounce rate= (total visitors on a webpage w. no interactions / total visitors on the webpage) x 100

It’s time to measure

If you’re running a native advertising campaign, you should track each of these metrics both while the campaign is running and when it’s complete.

When you need to produce a reliable analysis, you must do everything necessary before launching your campaign. Without that, you can’t accurately measure your performance or make the right decisions. Take a look at this checklist we’ve built to help you identify the essential factors you should consider before launching any native ad campaign.

If you are wondering where to start analyzing your performance, one tool you can use daily is Google Analytics. The platform is a treasure trove of advertising data you can use to improve your performance.

In addition, our native advertising platform includes a dashboard that we designed to provide you with real-time access to all the analytics tools you need to understand and optimize reader conversion and engagement across native campaigns from the very first minute you launch your campaign. We also have this article about the best tools to optimise your native campaign.

If you’re new to native advertising, it’s normal to feel a bit confused about what goals you should establish at the start of your campaign. Additionally, you may not fully understand how native ads can help your business achieve its goals.

If you don't know where to start, book a meeting to build a native advertising strategy tailored to your industry. Our team will support you in setting SMART goals, creating your campaign, and showing you how to use the dashboard for performance measurement.