How to Monitor Co-Op Ads to Determine SOV and Campaign Compliance

When it comes to turbo boosting the results of co-op advertising, few tactics are more effective than securing the highest share of voice  (SOV) on a retail site. There is, unsurprisingly, a direct correlation between strong brand presence and increased sales. But how do you ensure your brand is reaching and enticing beauty-loving shoppers? The key is negotiating the best ad space, then monitoring success.

The importance of a high SOV

First, it’s important to understand what SOV is, and why it’s so important. Put simply, it’s the percentage share of the visibility your brand owns compared to your competitors. On a retail site, such as Boots or Cult Beauty, you want that percentage to be high. This means your brand is more easily discoverable than your competitors.

Consider the shopper journey. The start of the online path to purchase begins with recruiting customers by driving awareness. Whether via paid, earned or owned media, this phase sees users navigate to a retail site after seeing a social post, paid ad, organic search result or digital press coverage.

In the next phase, SOV becomes crucial. The risk of not having enough visibility is that fickle shoppers may switch product or brand during the journey if one of your competitors is more visible. This stage encapsulates display ads (such as a banner or carousel) and top rankings in retailer search results for specific terms. By negotiating a higher share, you increase your chances of encouraging clicks, leading shoppers to the next phase: engaging with your product page content.

This content needs to be compelling and comprehensive, featuring a wide array of images and descriptive copy that brings your product to life through the shopper’s screen. The final stage is conversion. And the higher your SOV is throughout your campaign, the more consumers will reach this lucrative, revenue-boosting phase.

Negotiating high SOV

By using an ad tracking tool specifically designed for co-op campaigns, you can identify ad spaces with a high SOV before the go-live date. mmi adCHECK helps you do just that using a proprietary methodology. We look at specific ad spaces on a range of retailers and track them over time. Our tool then collects information on what appears in the space, overlays the online reach, and provides a share of voice within your brand’s category. This helps you easily identify the best-performing placements, so you can make data-driven decisions about where to invest your budget.

Monitoring your campaign

On average, 22% of co-op ad campaigns are non-compliant, meaning they don’t appear on the retail site as agreed or expected. The most common failure is reduced up-time, with campaigns starting too late, ending too soon or faltering somewhere in the middle. Meanwhile, a high proportion of non-compliant ads direct to the incorrect landing page, causing disruptions to the shopper journey. The right ad tracking tool will enable you to monitor your ads throughout the campaign period, so you can make sure the right ad appears with the right message and links at the right time. If it falls into the 22% of ads that are non-compliant, you will have screenshots you can share with the retailer. This could entitle you to a rebate or a credit for future activity.

Having the right tools

When we reviewed the top five beauty launches over summer 2021, we saw that there was sometimes a discrepancy between the media presence that attracts the shoppers initially, the share of voice visibility and the etail product page presence. Having the right tools in place to ensure both mediums are working in tandem will create a more seamless customer journey, And that’s what every consumer and brand wants from the customer journey. It also has the added benefit of maximising your beauty brand’s budgets to be as effective as possible. 

Up next: It’s not just co-op ad campaigns you should be monitoring. Discover how you can track your beauty media coverage.