Ever wonder how much ad performance may be linked to brand awareness? LinkedIn has recently started rolling out a Brand Lift Testing feature, which surveys people to see if they remember seeing your ads.

These surveys run in conjunction with active ad campaigns. You won’t be charged for running a survey, but note that they do still come with a hefty price tag. You’ll need to budget a minimum of $90,000 ad spend over the period of time you’re running a Brand Lift Test. Test duration can be between 3 and 90 days, so even if you opt for the maximum timeframe, you’ll need to be spending at least $30,000/month on LinkedIn Ads.

Creating a Brand Lift Test

To set up a Brand Lift Test, look for the “Testing” option in the top nav bar of your LinkedIn ad account. If you don’t see this yet, LinkedIn appears to be rolling the option out to campaigns in stages.

Click the “Create test” button, and you’ll see an option to create a Brand Lift Test. Select the details for your test, starting by adding a title and description for your own reference.

Next, choose how many metrics you want to measure (anywhere from 2-6). Note that each additional metric/question added increases required spend by $45,000.

Now, you can select whether to run a test for the entire account or for one campaign group. You can also set a schedule for the dates your test will run.

In the next section, you can choose the questions you’d like to use in your survey.

The first question is required to be an “ad recall” theme, simply asking if people remember seeing an ad for your brand in the past week. For additional questions, you can choose from five other brand metrics:

• Aided awareness: “Have you heard of [brand/product]?”
• Brand familiarity: “How familiar are you with [brand/product]?”
• Brand favorability: “How favorably do you view [brand/product]?”
• Recommendation: “How likely are you to recommend [brand/product] to someone else?”
• Product consideration: “How likely are you to consider[brand/product] for your next purchase?”

Finally, you can launch your test. Once a Brand Lift Test has run, you’ll be able to see how many test/control responses came through the forms. LinkedIn will report on the following metrics, including insight into statistical significance:

• Absolute brand lift
• Relative brand lift
• Estimated total lift
• Cost per lifted member

While the price tag may put this option out of reach for smaller advertisers, Brand Lift Tests offer an option previously not available on LinkedIn to determine how effectively ads are building familiarity with your product or service. For brands spending at least $30,000/month, these tests would certainly be worth running, possibly in conjunction with tests of select campaign types and asset promos.

Have you run a LinkedIn Brand Lift Test? Are you planning to run one? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!