Global measurement and data analytics company Nielsen has launched a measurement solution to help advertisers assess the effectiveness of influencer marketing. The Nielsen Influencer Brand Effect solution is a measurement tool designed to help brands and agencies measure the effectiveness of their influencer marketing activity against brands’ goals and metrics such as brand awareness, ad recall, and purchase intent.
The new tool also provides content metrics to assess whether an influencer is a good fit for a brand and whether the content is effective in changing audience perceptions, which comes at a good time as social media platforms are testing the removal of engagement metrics such as likes and views.
“It’s an innovation we are betting that will elevate the results measurement of influencers, and make it much clearer and more logical than measuring by engagement alone,” said Sabrina Balhes, digital media leader.
Solving the key challenge
The methodology for Nielsen’s measurement includes obtaining the responses of influencers’ followers to determine how effective the influencer has been at driving key metrics. Respondents are screened to ensure they fall within the target audience before being presented with a list comprising all of the influencers on a media plan, along with other influencers operating within the same area. Respondents that follow the specific influencers on the media plan will fall into the ‘Test’ group and those that do not will fall into the ‘Control’ group.
During the campaign, a brand KPI survey is administered to both of these groups and brand lift is determined by comparing the performance of the test group against the Control group. Up to three pieces of influencer content are tested via forced exposure to access creative performance against a set of standard KPIs.
“The Nielsen Influencer Brand Effect solution looks to solve this challenge by giving brands and agencies a greater understanding of the impact of their influencer campaigns. By analysing KPIs such as familiarity, likeability and branding, research can provide actionable insights for brands to ensure that they are always improving their communications and relationships with their consumers,” commented Barney Farmer, UK media commercial director at Nielsen.
