Incrementality test results in revenue for Norse Atlantic Airways

The Challenge

Google Analytics 4 attribution and in-platform data did not accurately, or effectively, prove the value of Norse Atlantic Airways’ social media advertising efforts in terms of contribution to bottom-line revenue. Senior stakeholders considered switching off the channel, based on the assumption that it was contributing minimal or no value to the brand’s bookings and revenue.

To test this hypothesis, Norse challenged Impression to prove the value of paid social activity on bottom-line revenue performance.

Application

To overcome this challenge and to meet our brief, we employed our approach to modern media measurement to deploy an incrementality test to control for and measure the impact of the paid social advertising.

We reduced advertising spend in certain regions of our target country across a ~3-week period, comparing results with a synthetic control group to statistically measure the impact of turning off social advertising.

We observed a near-immediate significant drop in revenue, indicating a high probability that this decrease was caused by pausing social ads. When the test concluded, revenue took approximately 19 days to recover to forecast levels, telling us that a consistent paid social investment is critical for sustained revenue.

The Results

The test provided strong evidence to suggest Norse should continue to invest in social advertising and we also learned that there are delayed positive effects.

32%

The results indicate that, at the time of the test, paid social advertising contributed to approximately 32% of overall sales in the test location.

This approach engaged key, senior stakeholders who are now supportive of this channel’s advertising effectiveness and have opted to continue to invest in paid social on the basis of these test results.

We're really pleased we were able to clearly demonstrate the value and contribution of our social advertising efforts via incrementality testing. When relying solely on web analytics acquisition data, the value was difficult to see, however through structured testing, we have been able to illustrate its value - likely driving double-digit percentage points of our revenue.

Helen Astroulakis Digital Campaign Manager, Norse Atlantic Airways