How to Measure Account-Based Ad Campaigns
Account-based advertising campaigns present display advertising to your key stakeholders as they browse the web. These ads are delivered through a variety of exchanges and can appear anywhere from LinkedIn to the Washington Post. Unlike SEM or PPC campaigns that are measured on clickthroughs and lead generation, the key benefit of account based advertising is that it improves brand awareness with the most important stakeholders at your target accounts, without any ad spend wasted on non-decision makers.
Measurement varies by campaign
What you end up measuring for an account based advertising campaign will vary depending on the funnel stage and other factors. Below are a few common patterns.
| Goal | Targeting | Measurement |
| Accelerate pipeline | Stakeholders on stuck deals | Stage progression from targeted deals |
| Drive top of funnel engagement from target accounts | Key department(s) at unengaged target accounts |
# of Accounts moving from Unengaged to Engaged # of Sales triggers created # of MQAs produced $ value of pipeline influence |
| Improve response rates to prospecting efforts | Leads in your SDR cadences | Lift in response rate to calls, emails, and social touches |
| Improve customer retention | Influence group at customer accounts | Lift in engagement with customer marketing or account manager |
Depending on your campaign and the associated goals, you will end up using a mixture of Triblio reporting and CRM reporting to ultimately measure the success of these efforts.
As an example, below is a screenshot of a dashboard in CRM built on Triblio data that shows new account engagement picking up after an ad campaign launches.
What about web analytics?
Triblio connects natively to both Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics, so it is possible to measure clickthrough behavior on your ads in those tools. That being said, there are a number of measurement "gotchas" to avoid when using web analytics to evaluate the outcomes of your account based advertising efforts.
Web analytics can't easily show overall account/segment lift
Because the nature of ad campaigns is to drive brand awareness with key stakeholders, the best "web traffic" measurement for a campaign is whether or not you get overall lift in engagement from your target accounts. That report is available in Triblio but would take extensive setup to replicate in your web analytics tools. When measuring lift, look to the built-in reports that Triblio provides.
Web analytics can't measure offline outcomes
In the sample campaigns mentioned above, most of the metrics require a mix of account scoring from Triblio or CRM reporting for things like stage progression or prospecting outcomes. When measuring campaign outcomes and presenting to your internal stakeholders, make sure you've framed the desired outcomes in advance so that everyone is analyzing value in the right tool.
Web analytics misrepresent Session Duration for single-page campaigns
A very common pattern we see in account based advertising is clients pointing their ads to a custom piece of content, such as a blog post written for a key segment or a landing page designed to increase awareness of a new offering. In either case, it is normal behavior for users to click on the page and then exit when they're done looking at the content. Unfortunately, a known limitation of web analytics is that such sessions are reported as lasting for 0 seconds, because web analytics tools can only measure Session Duration when a visit has multiple pageviews. (A helpful technical explanation is available from Analytics Edge.) Again, the better metric is to evaluate account lift in Triblio or campaign outcomes based on CRM activity.