
Nielsen, a global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics, has identified for the first time the drivers of brand lift on emerging media, illuminating common factors that drive campaign performance.
While a body of research exists on brand lift drivers for traditional media such as TV, Nielsen's new research uncovers where advertisers can focus efforts to create more compelling initiatives for emerging media including podcast advertising, influencer marketing campaigns and branded content that positively impact consumer perception of their brands.
Nielsen explored more than 1,000 U.S. campaigns across podcasts, social media influencer content and branded content to pinpoint the five key attributes that move the needle for brands:
Brand recall
Enjoyability
Captivating
Relatability
Non-negativity
In aggregate, these five drivers offset the need to go viral to raise awareness with consumers. While virality helps grow reach and attention, Nielsen data suggests that content doesn't have to hit a virality goal to be successful with emerging media. Instead, advertisers should strive to achieve success in creating content that meets the key criteria uncovered in the research.
In addition to the five brand lift drivers identified in the research, Nielsen discovered key considerations for applying the brand lift drivers to campaigns:
Brand recall is critical. If audiences can't remember the brand after seeing an influencer ad, a branded content piece or hearing a podcast ad, then brand lift is very difficult to achieve. New media formats provide more opportunities for creativity than a traditional ad, but creativity without evoking strong recall is not enough to drive brand lift.
The four remaining factors - how enjoyable the content is, how captivating it is, how relatable it is and how well it avoids veering into negativity - are equally important to driving brand lift, further emphasizing how brands do not need to aim for virality or tolerate running alongside negativity to produce successful emerging media campaigns.
Brand lift is highly dependent on how strong the brand already is. Therefore, research systems must take the context of brand strength into account when comparing to normative data. Otherwise, advertisers risk deprioritizing good content on leader brands or prioritizing bad content on challenger brands.
These newly-identified brand lift drivers for emerging media provide advertisers deeper insights and unprecedented comparability for new media channels, said Arica McKinnon, Vice President, Campaign Analytics, Nielsen. This represents a huge step for advertisers to be able to leverage these fresh insights to critically evaluate their campaigns and make adjustments to reach consumers where they're spending an increasing amount of time.
Marketers have known emerging media can be impactful for their campaigns, but many have lacked the tools to measure its distinct impact within these growing channels, said Mae Karwowski, CEO of Obviously, an influencer marketing agency. New research and insights are critical for helping demystify these channels and show ROI in investing ad dollars in this space.
The emerging media brand lift research detailed in this report is based on analyses from more than 1,000 studies of measured brand lift from U.S. ad campaigns across podcasts, social media (influencer marketing) and branded content. The 1,000+ studies spanned 10 categories, including CPG, retail, automotive and financial services. Download the report here.
Press Contact: Landon Oakum
Senior Communications Manager
landon.oakum@nielsen.com
Most recent headlines
09/11/2025
Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...
13/10/2025
Spectrum Brings Selected L.A. Lakers Games to Apple Vision Pro With New Immersiv...
13/10/2025
Media Climate Accord aims to offer united approach to M&E industry sustainabilit...
13/10/2025
Riot Games streamlines production of Valorant Champions Paris with ST 2110 flypa...
13/10/2025
Feeling the NRG: Riot Games puts on a show for Valorant Champions Paris final By Jo Ruddock
Monday, October 13, 2025 - 09:17
Print This Story
After more t...
13/10/2025
FOX Sports MLB Postseason Audio Aims To Make Officials' Calls More AccurateA1 Joe Carpenter hopes to bring some baseball CSI' to the ABS ump-cam system...
13/10/2025
New SBS and NITV Original RECKLESS a Deadly Funny Thriller Straight Out of Fre...
13/10/2025
Regional sports network moves from satellite to IP to cut distribution costs by more than half and streamline broadcast and direct-to-consumer delivery
Mid-Atl...
13/10/2025
Delta Live, the award-winning audio supplier, has underlined its position at the forefront of live sound with significant investments in cutting edge audio syst...
13/10/2025
Abu Dhabi, UAE October 13, 2025: Space42 (ADX: SPACE42), the UAE-based AI-powe...
13/10/2025
Nick Blood and Saffron Hocking lead casting for Hit Point, brand new original drama series for U and U&Dave
Developed & Produced by Urban Myth Films (a STUDIOC...
13/10/2025
The series from A24 will land in the UK & Ireland in 2026Monday 13 October 2025
...
13/10/2025
Back to All News
Grand Galaxy Hotel' Open for Business: Netflix Confirms Production and Cast
Entertainment
13 October 2025
GlobalSouth Korea
Link copi...
13/10/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Partners with GOBELINS Paris and Guillermo del Toro to...
13/10/2025
Back to All News
Stories Set to Thrill, Move, and Entertain: Netflix Announces ...
13/10/2025
Fox Corporation Executives to Discuss First Quarter Fiscal 2026 Financial Result...
13/10/2025
At the OCP Global Summit, NVIDIA is offering a glimpse into the future of gigawa...
13/10/2025
Season 2 brings murder and West of Ireland humour - and rain - to our screens, with M ir ad Tyers joining the cast
Watch trailer here.
A small-town obituary w...
13/10/2025
The Katie Hannon Interview Live airs tonight & Wednesday night at 7pm
As part of RT 's comprehensive election campaign coverage, journalist Katie Hannon w...
11/10/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: TAB M Solutions' Joe Wire, Kevin Tucker on Guidin...
11/10/2025
By Jessica Herndon
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Fest...
11/10/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. In a move that highlights the growing importance of streaming apps on pay TV platforms, Charter Communications' Spectrum operating brand has...
11/10/2025
Netflix is expanding its video game offerings from mobile into TV by launching party games that its subscribers can play on smart TVs....
11/10/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. Charter Communications' Spectrum News has reached an deal with Comcast to expand distribution of its local news channels to Xfinity TV cust...
11/10/2025
Professional podcasts are booming. They're an effective way to establish company executives as industry leaders, humanize a large organization, drill down o...
11/10/2025
PlayBox Neo, a leading provider of media playout and channel branding solutions, will present its PlayBox Neo Suite media platform for the first time in the U.S...
11/10/2025
As a testament to its commitment to the broadcast market, FOR-A America will bring several popular and future-facing technologies to the NAB Show New York, runn...
11/10/2025
European technology developer Profuz Digital reflects on another successful IBC Show in Amsterdam from 12 15 September after showcasing the latest version of ...
11/10/2025
Cobalt Digital, the leading designer and manufacturer of award-winning signal processing products, and a founding partner in the openGear initiative, is headin...
11/10/2025
Lightware, an industry leader in signal management, is at the center of a growing range of high-profile integrations with its UBEX platform. Built to deliver un...
11/10/2025
FOR-A Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) will bring its industry-leading signal processing, frame rate conversion and graphics playout software to CAPER 2025...
11/10/2025
Clear-Com is happy to announce its latest collaboration with BNE Productions, a premier production company known for delivering world-class audio for live even...
11/10/2025
Dean's List: Tommy Neblett Shares His YouTube Top Five Boston Conservatory's dean of dance reveals his favorite student dance videos.
By
Sarah Godcher...
10/10/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: TAB M Solutions' Joe Wire, Jeff Tucker on Guiding...
10/10/2025
SVG Students To Watch: Vincent Macri, Monmouth University The Jersey local runs Camera 1 on Hawks games and is expanding into technical directing By Brandon Co...
10/10/2025
Flexible budgets: Inside the DFL's new customisable camera concepts for Bund...
10/10/2025
Facing the future: TVN on its technical services for the new Bundesliga season with remote production and all the bells and whistles By Heather McLean
Monday...
10/10/2025
Evolving in-house: Developing broadcast expertise and pushing the women's ga...
10/10/2025
Growing the game: The Deutscher Fu ball-Bund on pushing production innovation fo...
10/10/2025
Proximity and authenticity: DFL kicks off the new football season with more broa...
10/10/2025
Spectrum Brings Select L.A. Lakers Games to Apple Vision Pro With New Immersive ...
10/10/2025
From left, Scoot McNairy, Andrew Durham, Nessa Dougherty, and Emilia Jones attend the premiere of Fairyland at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Jemal...
10/10/2025
By Chuck Parker, CEO of Sohonet
If you work in film and television, you can feel it: anxiety is high. Budgets are tight, schedules are tighter, and AI is a c...
10/10/2025
L3Harris' WESCAM MX-Series EO/IR sensor systems have a long history of supporting complex missions in harsh environments, as seen here on a Kaplan-20 Next G...
10/10/2025
Cobalt Digital Booth # 607 // Journalists: Click to visit Cobalt
NAB NY 2025 Audio monitors join Cobalt's platform, including its latest routers, multiview...
10/10/2025
NEW YORK - October 9, 2025 - Nielsen, the global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics, today announced the release of The Marketing ROI Blueprint:...
10/10/2025
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Cobalt Digital will feature its Aria series of audio solutions designed to simplify monitoring, embedding and routing at NAB Show New York, set ...
10/10/2025
LOS ANGELES and PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida Amazon's Prime Video has announced a new deal that will allow it to exclusively stream a revival of the PGA Tour&...
10/10/2025
ATLANTA Local Now, Allen Media Group's free streaming service, will add five channels from Fox to its growing lineup. The new offerings are Fox Sports, Fox ...
10/10/2025
WASHINGTON The National Association of Broadcasters is applauding a draft notice from the Federal Communications Commission that would potentially speed up the ...