In the past, I have taken a pretty hard stance on the idea that norms and averages across social advertising campaigns should not be used when trying to establish goals and measures of success.   The chart below, which illustrates website visitor data for 43 Ad Council campaigns, supports this notion.  It is clear that there is no normative pattern in website sessions among our various campaigns; therefore, providing an average to help establish a goal for website visitors would be setting ourselves up for failure.  Ultimately, by using an average we would over or under-estimate a campaign’s true potential to garner visitors. 

So, in order to understand what drives website traffic to our social advertising campaign websites, the Ad Council worked with Robinson and Muenster Associates (RMA) to conduct a cross-campaign regression analysis.  Here are some the key findings that can help provide context to our campaigns when establishing goals and evaluating success:

-      When your target audience is broad (e.g. adults 18+), it results in more web sessions per month

-      When a sponsoring organization is publically well known, it results in more web sessions per month

-      When a micro-site or “vanity URL” is created specifically for a social marketing campaign (rather than driving to an existing website), it results in fewer web sessions per month 

-      When a URL name is difficult to remember, it results in fewer web sessions per month

-      When the social issue you are advertising appears in Google Search’s top 5 listings, it results in more web sessions per month

-      Increased support/placement in Google’s AdWords results in more web sessions per month

-      When a you are more active in promoting the social issue (through several outlets and partnerships), it results in more web sessions per month