Programmatic campaigns generate a wide range of performance metrics, including impressions, clicks, CTR, CPA, and view rates. These metrics describe delivery and engagement, but they don't always answer a key marketing question: did the campaign influence how people perceive the brand?
Brand lift studies address that gap. Thanks to our partnership with Cint, advertisers can launch survey-based brand lift studies from within the illumin platform. Now to be clear, marketers can set up the study inside illimin, but Cint runs the entire study outside our platform. That way, marketers can feel confident in the independent nature of reports that describe changes in brand awareness, recall, favorability, and intent.
The Cint Lucid Measurement Brand Lift report measures changes in brand perception by comparing survey responses from two groups. The exposed group includes people who were served the campaign’s ads. The control group has people with similar audience characteristics but were not served the ads.
Both groups answer the same survey questions. When results differ between the two groups, the difference is referred to as lift. Lift indicates how ad exposure influenced audience perception, allowing advertisers to evaluate brand impact using direct audience feedback rather than relying only on engagement metrics.
illumin integrates Cint to provide scalable, survey-based brand measurement without requiring manual coordination with external research vendors. Cint applies established research methodologies, including control group matching and statistical confidence thresholds, to support reliable results.
Cint’s global reach supports studies across multiple countries and languages. Its standardized methodology also enables consistent comparison across campaigns. This partnership allows illumin users to plan, launch, and review brand lift studies in a self-serve workflow within the same platform used for campaign execution and optimization.
Once results are available, marketers can understand which tactics and ad types drive relative lift in the study. These insights help inform budget shifts, support ad-type pausing decisions, and highlight new opportunities for future campaigns.
The Cint Lucid Measurement Brand lift report asks two kinds of questions.
1. Brand awareness
2. Ad recall
3. Brand favorability
4. Brand consideration
5. Purchase intent
6. Brand recommendation
The reliability of brand lift results depends on several factors. Sample size is critical, as larger samples reduce random variation and improve result stability. Feasibility also matters, since campaign reach, impression volume, audience size, and duration affect whether enough responses can be collected. illumin provides feasibility guidance to help assess these factors during planning.
Statistical confidence is another key factor. Cint makes report data available when the study's confidence level reaches 80%. Higher confidence levels reflect stronger statistical reliability.
Note that not all KPI questions will reach statistical significance. Even when confidence thresholds aren't met, lift measurement against those questions can still provide useful directional insights and highlight general trends. Continuing to run the study may generate more responses, which can strengthen confidence levels over time and improve the reliability of results.
Cint uses projected impression delivery and campaign duration to estimate reach and survey feasibility. Higher impression volumes and longer campaigns generally improve the likelihood of achieving sufficient sample sizes, which supports clearer lift results and stronger confidence.
Changes to impressions or campaign end dates don't affect survey questions, but they can influence feasibility and result precision. Campaigns that end early or deliver fewer impressions than planned may produce results with wider confidence ranges.
Lucid, illumin’s measurement partner, collects exposure data through pixel tracking, server-to-server connections, or Smart TV ACR tracking. Lucid then links these exposures to the Lucid Graph and delivers survey questions to both exposed users and a control group of non-exposed users. This approach supports statistically significant lift measurement.
Cint brand lift provides illumin users with a structured way to evaluate brand impact using survey-based measurement. When results are available, marketers can download a report as a PPT, which provides an easy-to-read display of charts, and an .xlsx file, which helps users dig deep into the data. Read a sample PPT and .xlsx report to learn how the data is presented. Click the links to down the files.
By comparing responses from exposed and control groups, advertisers gain insight into how campaigns influenced awareness, recall, favorability, and intent.
Confidence levels and feasibility guidance help contextualize results and set expectations. Self-serve access within the DSP makes brand measurement a practical part of campaign planning and evaluation. For advertisers focused on understanding and demonstrating brand impact, Cint brand lift adds meaningful context to programmatic performance data.
Brand lift measures changes in brand perception rather than user actions. It helps marketers understand brand impact that performance metrics cannot explain.
Yes, Cint supports studies across more than 30 countries and multiple languages, which allows consistent measurement for global campaigns. Learn more.
No, survey questions stay the same, but changes to impressions or campaign length can affect feasibility and confidence levels.
Brand lift works best for upper-funnel campaigns where the goal focuses on awareness, recall, or brand consideration rather than immediate conversions.
You can find detailed information on Cint’s official support site.