Consumers no longer just interact with one ad and make a purchase. They might start by scrolling social media, reading reviews, and seeing search ads—interactions that shape their decision-making in ways that aren’t always obvious.
Enter the halo effect in marketing: a cognitive bias that amplifies your campaigns but also leaves you scratching your head when it comes to measurement.
Due to the marketing halo, your impression in one area is able to influence opinions in another. But how do you measure these subtle, indirect impacts? And how do you avoid wasting resources on activities that aren’t pulling their weight? Let’s find out.
Key takeaways:
- The halo effect in marketing happens when efforts aimed at a specific channel create a positive impact on the performance of other platforms.
- Understanding the halo effect helps prioritize high-impact campaigns, maximize ROI, and optimize your marketing strategy.
- Traditional measurement tools like multi-touch attribution (MTA) fall short of capturing the halo effect’s complexities.
- Brands can maximize the halo impact by leveraging a marketing mix modeling (MMM) platform like Keen to get better insights.
What is the halo effect in marketing?
The halo effect is the indirect impact of one marketing activity on other platforms. It’s not just about what a single campaign achieves on its own—it’s also about the ripple effects it creates across platforms, channels, and touchpoints.
For example, a well-placed TV ad might drive increased search clicks and social media presence, indirectly benefiting online sales. In fact, the Video Advertising Bureau’s Top 10 of Q1 2023 research shows how a brand’s website sees a 35% increase in traffic when a television ad is live.
The catch: marketing halo has a dual nature. The reverse halo effect—called the horn effect—can occur when a poorly executed campaign drags down your broader marketing portfolio. The horn effect is much more dangerous, as according to a survey, 73% of consumers could stop purchasing from a brand after just one negative experience.
Examples of the halo effect in marketing
Here’s a breakdown:
| Halo effect examples | Horn effect examples |
| A surge in positive customer reviews boosts visibility and traffic to unrelated product or service pages. | A poorly rated product drags down overall brand image. |
| A retail media network (RMN) campaign improves your website rankings. | A failed flagship campaign casts doubt on other marketing activities despite their quality. |
| A viral social media influencer marketing campaign or celebrity endorsements indirectly increase foot traffic to physical stores. | A controversial ad campaign alienates a core customer segment. |
Why do you need to measure the marketing halo effect?
You’re already juggling budgets, strategies, and goals. So why add another layer of complexity by measuring the halo impact? Because it helps you:
- Optimize marketing spend: Without understanding the halo effect, you might overinvest in campaigns with limited impact while overlooking those that create ripple effects across your marketing efforts. Halo measurement helps you put your money where it matters most.
- Demonstrate marketing ROI: A campaign’s true impact often extends to brand loyalty, search traffic, and even unrelated product sales. Brand halo measurement ensures you’re getting full credit for what your marketing achieves.
- Plan strategically: Understanding how channels and platforms influence each other allows you to create a more cohesive marketing mix strategy. Measurement shows you what’s working, where, and why, so you can plan campaigns that complement rather than compete with each other.
The challenge of measuring the halo impact
If measuring marketing success was straightforward, every campaign would be a guaranteed win. But the marketing halo effect adds layers of complexity that traditional methods can’t capture. Understanding and quantifying this phenomenon is a challenge due to:
Non-linear relationships across channels
Consumer behavior is rarely linear. A customer might see an ad on an RMN, read a glowing review online, and then search for your brand on Google before purchasing. These touchpoints are connected, but the relationships aren’t direct or predictable. Traditional measurement tools struggle to capture this interplay.
Case in point: an ICSC study found that opening a physical store could boost the online sales of a brand in the nearby areas by 6.9%. The number is even higher for apparel brands, seeing an increase of 11.6%.
The limitations of multi-touch attribution (MTA)
Multi-touch attribution was supposed to solve the problem of tracking consumer journeys across touchpoints. In reality, it often disappoints.
MTA tends to oversimplify by assigning credit to individual interactions without accounting for external variables—like market trends or consumer sentiment—that heavily influence behavior. Its narrow focus on last-touchpoint metrics leaves major gaps in understanding how campaigns work together.
Read more: The differences between marketing mix modeling and multi-touch attribution
The complexity of the digital shelf
Platforms like Amazon and Google are governed by a web of factors: search rankings, product descriptions, and loyal customer reviews. These factors influence each other dynamically, making it difficult to isolate how a single campaign or activity contributes to overall performance.
The digital shelf is an ecosystem, and measuring the brand halo effect requires tools that can analyze this complexity holistically.
How to measure the halo effect in your marketing data
Identifying the halo advertising spillover needs the right tools and approach. While you can spot some clues intuitively, data-driven marketing analysis is the only way to accurately measure and understand these subtle, indirect effects. To pinpoint the halo effect, look for:
- Correlations: Is strong performance on one platform boosting results elsewhere?
- Unexpected spikes: Are organic traffic or visibility suddenly increasing after a campaign?
- Brand perception shifts: Have customer sentiment metrics improved after key marketing activities?
- Performance clusters: Are certain campaigns outperforming expectations without a clear explanation?
Why intuition isn’t enough
Spotting these patterns can give you valuable insights, but relying solely on marketing instincts or surface-level metrics is risky. The halo effect marketing is complex, and without robust data analysis, you risk overestimating or underestimating its true impact. That’s where advanced tools come in.
The role of advanced MarTech tools: Marketing mix modeling (MMM)
Marketing mix modeling with machine learning and artificial intelligence has revolutionized how marketers measure the advertising halo. It accounts for the intricate relationships between platforms, channels, and consumer behavior. Backed by sophisticated mathematical calculations, it provides a deeper understanding of how your marketing efforts work together.
Keen’s MMM platform takes a unique and transparent approach to measuring the brand halo effect:
- Bayesian approach for precision and clarity: Our Bayesian methods allow users to evaluate the expected ROI of a tactic using our Marketing Elasticity Engine (MEE).
- Unified marketing measurement: Keen doesn’t stop at measuring individual campaigns. Our platform evaluates halo effects across your entire portfolio, helping you understand how different brands and channels influence one another.
- Trustworthy forecasting: With Keen, you’re never left guessing about the quality of your data. Users can run a holdout forecast to test how their model performs against future outcomes. As new data comes in, you can compare actual results with forecasts, ensuring your strategy stays aligned with reality.
- User-friendly platform without statistical complexity: You don’t need to be a data scientist or know about r-squares, standard errors, or MAPEs. We make sophisticated modeling accessible, giving you the tools you need without the technical headaches.
Maximize your brand halo effect with Keen
Once you understand the marketing halo, it’s time to put it to work. Optimize your marketing channel mix and focus your efforts on high-impact activities like flagship campaigns that drive advertising spillover effects across platforms. At the same time, improve your digital shelf with better search rankings, product descriptions, and customer reviews to add to the indirect benefits.
With Keen’s advanced MMM capabilities, you easily isolate these indirect benefits, providing insights into how campaigns influence each other across channels. Plus, you can use our predictive analytics tools to help you plan smarter and allocate resources effectively.
Maximize your halo effect in marketing with a free trial of the Keen platform.
