The Digital Voice talks to Sean Adams, global insight director, Brand Metrics about brand lift, leadership and more in this exclusive interview
Sean Adams is global insight director at Brand Metrics whose SaaS technology provides simple, yet highly powerful ways for publishers to measure brand uplift for any digital ad campaign
Describe your company?
Brand Metrics is a Swedish technology company that provides simple, yet highly powerful ways for publishers to measure brand uplift for any digital ad campaign, no matter its size, ensuring they can provide tangible proof of their site’s value to advertisers. Our SaaS technology presents unintrusive surveys on publisher websites that capture frequency of campaign exposure and brand relationship. A regression-based algorithm then calculates brand lift across four key metrics: awareness, consideration, brand preference and action intent and compares these scores against Brand Metrics’ global benchmarks, created using exactly the same methodology. The platform is built for scale, allowing publishers to measure the effect of many more campaigns than has been possible before.
Talk us through Brand Metric’s business journey
Brand Metrics was already well-established in the Nordics before I joined the team, but they were in the early stages of their geographical expansion and were seeking help to scale, especially into the UK market.
As a researcher and insights specialist with direct experience in the UK media industry, I was able to bring some objectivity to the business challenges facing Brand Metrics in their quest for expansion and was able to identify commercial opportunities and potential quick wins that would resonate with prospective clients and thereby validate the business model.
The great thing about Brand Metrics is the way the founders had identified a long-standing industry problem – the ability to measure digital campaigns at scale – and built a company specifically designed to address that challenge from the outset, by bringing together a combination of research and technology skill sets.
What are your key successes?
We have seen business continue to expand beyond Northern Europe, with 2020 seeing a doubling of the business, despite the pandemic. We now work with over 35 major media groups in 15 countries with an enviable client roster including Bloomberg, Washington Post, The Telegraph and The Financial Times.
Our most recent work with publishers like The Guardian has seen the news organisation use our software, not only to measure more individual campaigns for advertisers, but also to use the meta-data captured to formulate a deeper understanding of the contribution of campaign elements including ad formats, audience segments and context.
What are the key values of successful entrepreneurs?
You must always be clear about your strengths and weaknesses. Identify what your USP is and be able to confidently articulate this so it addresses the needs of your customers. If you aren’t clear about your positioning, you can’t expect your potential customers to understand why they should give you their business.
You must be forward-thinking and ensure you avoid tunnel-vision so you don’t miss any subtle shifts in the marketplace, competitors nipping at your heels and changing consumer behaviour trends. Carve out time to work on the business, not just in the business.
Beyond that, what I have also learned from the founders at Brand Metrics are values that seem to permeate Swedish culture, with compassion and purpose always being at the fore.
What were some business challenges faced and how have you overcome these?
Getting to a point of critical mass is hard when you are a newcomer to any new market. Initially, it is difficult to cut through the noise and establish a competitive edge, especially when the marketplace is full of higher profile incumbents, whilst your company is not yet on the radar of your potential customers.
You need to recognise that it takes time to generate brand awareness and raise your profile. In Brand Metrics' case, this meant using everything from PR and marketing to networking and prospecting, all of which helped us to reach a broader audience, build familiarity and generate momentum.
Can you share your advice for entrepreneurial success?
Having been an entrepreneur myself, I have always been closely attuned to the entrepreneurial mindset. As such, I was particularly taken by the vision that Anders Lithner and the other co-founders had for Brand Metrics and this is what inspired me to start working with them back in 2018.
I liked the way they had identified a real market problem (the fact that most digital ad campaigns aren’t being measured) and applied ‘what if?’ thinking and technology to develop a new solution. Often it takes an entrepreneurial mindset to move beyond category norms and imagine what an alternative future might look like, not bound by legacy thinking.
Another top tip is to focus on building a great team, which is the foundation of any successful business. Hiring is really crucial, so always recruit candidates who are better than you, then give them the freedom to go off and do what they are good at, thereby helping to accelerate your business journey with their individual expertise.
Sometimes entrepreneurs can struggle to delegate, having had a tight grip on everything from day one. This is understandable, but it also is a limitation to future growth. To scale, an entrepreneur must learn to replace themselves as much as possible, to free up the time and space to continue to grow and develop the business.
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