The team at interactive advertising company Specific Media believe they’ve uncovered a problem with how brand lift studies are usually carried out for online video campaigns. They’ve created an interesting white paper to share their findings.

In a glaring error, Specific Media says, brand lift studies don’t create test and control groups from the same target market or with similar demographics. This means the outcomes of those studies are fundamentally flawed. Specific Media analyzed multiple studies and found that customer purchase intent was greatly under-represented.

To remedy this, Specific Media created multiple brand lift studies for online video campaigns using control and test groups from the same target market. For three different campaigns—for a baby products brand, a beauty aid brand, and a home furnishings brand—Nielsen’s Digital Brand Effect (DBE) measured over a 100 percent rise in purchase intent. Specific Media notes that DBE usually finds an average lift below 20 percent.

“These results have left us confident in believing that digital video advertising is having a greater effect on brand attitudes, and ultimately on sales, than most advertisers currently recognize,” the white paper says.

Download Specific Media’s white paper—“The Real Power of Digital Video Advertising”—for free (registration required).