PPC

Google expands Brand Lift Studies with enhanced measurement option

Google is rolling out a new Enhanced Brand Lift study to more advertisers, giving brands a more sensitive way to measure campaign impact—at the cost of a significantly larger budget.

What’s happening. Advertisers can now choose between two Brand Lift Study options in Google Ads:

  • Standard Brand Lift, which measures lifts of 2% or higher.
  • Enhanced Brand Lift, which can detect lifts as low as 1.2%.

Google says the enhanced option requires approximately three times the budget, but increases the likelihood of detecting a positive lift by 60%.

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Why we care. Measuring the effectiveness of brand campaigns has long been challenging, particularly when lift is modest. The enhanced study gives advertisers greater confidence in detecting smaller changes in awareness, consideration and other brand metrics, helping validate upper-funnel investment.

Between the lines. The introduction of Enhanced Brand Lift reflects Google’s broader investment in brand measurement as advertisers increasingly demand stronger evidence that awareness campaigns drive measurable outcomes. The higher budget requirement (x3), however, means the feature is likely to be most useful for larger campaigns with sufficient scale.

The bottom line. Google is giving advertisers a more precise way to measure brand campaign effectiveness, but the additional sensitivity comes with a significantly higher media investment.

First spotted. The update was first identified by Google Ads specialist, Thomas Eccel who shared the update on LinkedIn.

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About the author

Anu Adegbola

Paid Media News Editor, Search Engine Land

Anu Adegbola has been Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land since 2024. She covers paid search, paid social, retail media, video and more.

In 2008, Anu started her career delivering digital marketing campaigns (mostly but not exclusively Paid Search) by building strategies, maximising ROI, automating repetitive processes and bringing efficiency from every part of marketing departments through inspiring leadership both on agency, client and marketing tech side. Outside editing Search Engine Land article she is the founder of PPC networking event - PPC Live and host of weekly podcast PPC Live The Podcast.

She is also an international speaker with some of the stages she has presented on being SMX (US, UK, Munich, Berlin), Friends of Search (Amsterdam, NL), brightonSEO, The Marketing Meetup, HeroConf (PPC Hero), SearchLove, AdWorld Experience (Bologna, IT) and more.