Earlier this year, we took a look at some of the KPIs that 104 agencies and 106 brands reported being a priority for them. Given the timeline positioning amidst the COVID-19 crisis, we took that into consideration as a factor.
Now, we’re back with an updated look into what 2020’s second quarter looked like for brands and agencies, including KPIs, but also expanding beyond them into some of the decision making processes involved in digital advertising.
Join us here as we break all of that down and share the responses we received.
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Who responded this time around?
Before we share results, here’s who we heard from—respondents of varying job titles, seniority levels, company sizes, and industries.
Within the 155 brands we heard from and the 155 agencies, we received responses from account executives, c-suite level executives, VPs, and more.
A look at company size shows that the lion’s share of brand respondents come from either very large companies, or very small ones. On the agency side, we heard from respondents from a variety of agency sizes.
As far as industries go, we had a large array, but saw the top for brands shake out to be retail, food & beverage, and technology.
On the agency side, we saw the greatest number of respondents from agencies representing business clients, health / pharmaceutical / fitness clients, and retail clients.
How are brands and agencies utilizing native advertising?
To get a better understanding of how brands and agencies that use native advertising as a channel are, well, using it, we asked them specifically how they feel the channel helps move their business goals forward.
For both brands and agencies, awareness was the top response.
A shift from Q1 to Q2
To get a sense of the difference a quarter can make, we asked agencies to share, for the brands they cover, what their top three most important KPIs are for the remainder of 2020.
Compared to Q1 of 2020, sales revenue saw a 7% lift, customer acquisition cost‘s ranking went down by 6%, website traffic was up by 5%, and mobile traffic was up by 5% as well.
For brands, we asked them directly for their top priority 2020 KPIs. The biggest differences compared to Q1 were brand recall and/or recognition finding itself down 7%, sales revenue up by 5%, and and CAC (customer acquisition cost) down by 4%.
As we go forward…
…there’s no doubt that brands’ and agencies’ priorities will continue to adapt, and that’s why we plan to keep tabs on these goals, KPIs, and priorities.
The whole world had to adjust to COVID-19, and once brands and agencies got adjusted, they then had to figure out what the way forward might look like. That will be a process that continues on throughout 2020, and into 2021.
Stay tuned here for the latest on how brands and agencies are navigating, and how they’re turning to digital advertising efforts to continuously move the needle.