Can You Prove the ROI of Programmatic Spend?

For years, companies have leaned more and more into performance marketing as platforms got smarter and data becomes easier to track.

Now? The Pendulum swings in the other direction. Online user behavior has rapidly changed since 2020, online tracking and privacy have shifted measurement, and, of course, AI search. 

Marketers must re-evaluate how we define and measure success, especially in brand-building channels like programmatic. 

The good news? We now have the tools to prove its value, even in a post-performance-first world.

Google on The Messy Middle

This concept came out in 2020 from Google when they introduced the 'Messy Middle' to describe how linear marketing funnels no longer reflect real-world behavior. 

Today’s consumers are looping between exploration and evaluation, often staying “stuck” in the awareness phase. And then… ‘something’ happens in the consideration phase that resembles something more like spaghetti than a straight line, and then they loop again into the conversion phase. 

Because of this, agencies and companies are now shifting more budget into brand marketing efforts over performance marketing because of how important it is to keep people aware of their brand. 

One of the major ways companies invest in brand marketing is via programmatic media, which includes channels like display, native, CTV, online video, audio, and more. The challenge with brand marketing is: “how do we know it works?”. How do you break the mold of the performance mindset and still justify brand media spend? 

3 Data-Driven Ways to Prove Programmatic Works

1. Cross Channel Impact

Conversions in programmatic DSPs are often counted as “view-through” meaning someone at least saw your ad, and then eventually came back through another channel and converted. 

This is a great way to gauge if you’re reaching users across channels, maintaining an effective frequency, and driving impact in the upper funnel

Here’s an example cross-channel attribution report from our programmatic partner, StackAdapt 

What this data tells us:

1. About 18% of all website conversions happened after someone saw one of our programmatic ads, which gives us a good benchmark for impact.
2. Certain channels have a higher impact from programmatic. In this case, there was a higher conversion % for a retailer referring website, a publisher direct site, and email campaigns. For example, from this data, we could recommend using the email list for programmatic audiences, or do an inventory deal with the one retailer directly.

2. Map the Customer Journey from First Touch to Final Click

Seeing which channels were impacted from a programmatic ad is helpful, but digging one step further gives us another layer of data. We can take a look at the actual path users take most often, and what that conversion journey looks like. 

What this data tells us:

1. 4 out of the top 10 conversion paths on the website involve a display impression, and often involve another paid platform such as Facebook or Google, showing the importance of omnichannel marketing.
2. The time to convert after seeing a display ad is often over a week, while direct conversion from other channels is less than a day. This gives us a sense of how long it takes for someone to start seeing programmatic ads before they engage with the website. We can use this data to modify conversion windows, frequency targets, or just as a helpful benchmark as we think about budget pacing and when to expect to see impact from awareness spending. 

💡You might smartly ask: would they have converted anyway? This is where view-through attribution gets tricky - and you’re right, correlation doesn't always equal causation. For a deeper dive into proving true incremental impact, check out our guide on incrementality testing.

3. Pinpoint the Impression Frequency That Converts

This gets into the really nerdy statistical stuff. But one last important metric to look at to gauge the success of programmatic is ad effectiveness. This looks at how many impressions it takes to impact a conversion, and how that compares against users who never saw a programmatic ad. 

You don’t need to be a statistician to get actionable insights from this, so let’s break it down. 

What this data tells us:

1. 19 impressions per user is our sweet spot in this case, any more impressions after that doesn’t seem to impact conversions. We can either take that data to cap our frequency, or we can just keep an eye on average frequency per user and make sure it doesn’t go well above 19 to be as efficient as possible.
2. This data also has a control and exposed group. The control group (people who don’t see our ads) have a conversion rate of 0.03% - This makes sense since these people were never exposed to the brand, and so the likelihood for them to randomly go to the website and convert is very low
   
   Users that were exposed to our ads 19 times (remember, our sweet spot) had a conversion rate of 1.63%, meaning that delivering 19 ads to a user increased the likelihood to convert by 54x. While there’s nuance here that makes this directional, that clearly shows that ads are definitely impacting direct conversions. 

Brand Investment Isn’t a Leap of Faith, It’s a Measurable Investment

Brand marketing might feel like a gamble when you’re used to performance metrics. But when you know what to measure and why, programmatic can prove its value. 

And this is just the start. Brand lift studies, branded search volume, homepage visit trends, and even creative testing give you more ways to measure upper-funnel impact.

The days of pouring everything into Google Search are gone. Modern marketers must meet audiences in the messy middle – armed with both strategy and data to make awareness work smarter.

Ready to get smart with your programmatic ROI? Let's chat.