Stop Using Bounce Rate to Measure Paid Media.

Written By Paul Rakotoarisoa

The Problem: One Metric Leading to a $2 Million Mistake

I remember being excited about jumping onto the account—it was already an agency flagship B2B client with deep pockets which meant agency resources rolled deep, too. I heard about the exciting partnerships and measurement tools being evaluated through agency all-hands, media analytics practice updates, and water-cooler conversations just loud enough to eavesdrop on.

Onboarding, the first thing I did (like I always do) — before talking to any of the media planning or account management leadership — was talk through what was happening with the analysts assigned to the account. I find that hearing about the day-to-day from the team's perspective prepares me to ask the right questions and provides the right context, so I don't go in guns-blazing and mess things up thinking that I'm helping.

I also remember being impressed with the account machinery: hundreds of pages of documentation around processes, audience definitions, QBR templates, archived correspondence—all of it well organized, catalogued, tagged, and ready to dive into. I started (like I always do) with the most recently delivered QBR, and asked for the current measurement framework that defined what measures were considered critical enough to be tracked as KPIs. I had worked on too many engagements stuck in a perpetual loop because a measurement framework was never defined, or, if one was defined, no one adhered to it, or, if it was adhered to, it sucked.

So, the team walked me through the framework, their interpretation, and how it was being used. Then someone mentioned bounce rate as a critical media KPI and that one of the loudest alarms raised in recent calls was an extremely high bounce rate of 98%; all this leading up to a drastic pause in upwards of $2MM in media spend while the team was tasked to "figure out what's happening" and come up with a solution.

I thought I'd misheard. But no — 98% bounce rate from paid media traffic was being treated as a media performance problem. Not a site experience problem. Not a content strategy problem. A media problem.

So, I found myself left asking “What the actual f***?” (…like I always do)

Meet Bounce Rate: The Measurement Breaking Media Strategy

While different analytics tools and implementations may have nuanced definitions, at its simplest, bounce rate is the percentage of site sessions that contain only one page load. GA4 defines it with more specificity—a session with less than 10 seconds of engagement or no conversion events. Adobe defines it as a single "hit" sent back to its server during a session. Basically, a page loads and then...that's it. The end-user doesn't do anything else.

The thing is, seeing a 98% bounce rate from B2B paid media campaigns makes perfect sense.

Think about it from a user's perspective: someone sees an ad, clicks through to learn more, reads what they need, and dips. From their standpoint, mission accomplished. They got the information they wanted without navigating deeper into the site architecture. Even if the ad's call to action pointed to gated content with a form — depending on how the page is set up and how it's tagged — an end-user could fill out that form, download a white paper, and that session could still be considered a "bounce." B2B landing pages are often designed to be simple, succinct, and demand-capture oriented: land → skim → convert.

But in the measurement framework inherited, that successful interaction would still be seen as failure.

The Role of Paid Media (And Why This Matters)

Pinpointing the role of paid media in a brand's marketing strategy can be difficult. More difficult still is managing a brand's expectations of what it can deliver. Brands often look at paid media as a slot machine for MQL-ready demand rather than a necessary component of a blended strategy. An over-simplistic but effective way to think about paid media is as recruiting: finding the right audience, at the right time, and enticing them to dig further. Audience + Creative + Frequency = Conversion. All the effort and expertise focuses on the path and experience before a user lands on a landing page.

Paid media should not be measured using content and UX metrics, at least not as critical "do-we-spend-money" KPIs. When bounce rate is used as a media effectiveness KPI, media buyers start optimizing for traffic that will stick around instead of audience traffic that will convert. Creative teams start designing ads for longer site engagement rather than highlighting clearer value propositions and brand stickiness.

Bounce rate as a metric has been horribly over-indexed in usage outside of where it was meant to have impact: content and UX. From that context, bounce rate makes total sense to monitor and even set as a KPI. Poorly designed or slow-loading site experiences and un-engaging generic content ("In an ever-changing landscape..." IYKYK) discourage users from interacting more, leading to ultra-high bounce rates.

But that's not media's fault. That's not what media can fix.

Framework I Use Instead

So what would I recommend for measuring paid media effectiveness? Individual metrics are going to be context and objective specific. When I conduct measurement framework workshops with teams we always start with the organization's main objectives and make sure there's clarity around both what those key business results are and how paid media is expected to contribute to those outcomes. Often, that question gets blank stares or frustrated commentary about the briefing process—which is another area that needs collective education—but assuming the objectives and expected contributions are clear, the base framework is simple: Delivery, Engagement, Impact.

These pillars are geared toward media and advertising agencies, but the principles work for in-house teams as well. As a side note—these pillars adapted slightly can be used elsewhere outside of media: customer service, change management, and anywhere you need to measure effectiveness versus just activity.

Paid Media Effectiveness Framework

A way, way better way to look at how effective your paid media efforts are

Agency Accountability

Did the agency (or team) do its job managing the media investment?

What Actually Matters

  • Target Audience Penetration: Are we reaching the right people or just any people?
  • Budget Stewardship: CPM benchmarking, frequency capping, dayparting optimization
  • Campaign Execution: Viewability >70%, fraud detection, proper pacing
“If you're below 50% on‑target delivery,
the problem is targeting, not bounce rate.”

Messaging + Placement

Did audiences respond positively to the ad experiences themselves?

What Actually Matters

  • Ad Engagement Rate: Dwell time >3 seconds, deliberate interactions vs. accidental clicks
  • Consideration Signals: Brand search lift +20% within 24 hours, direct traffic increases
  • Creative Resonance: Message recall >30%, positive sentiment >70%
“Measure if the creative worked—
before anyone hits a landing page.”

Bottom Line

Did the media program influence business objectives?

What Actually Matters

  • Incremental Outcomes: What happened because of media that wouldn't have otherwise?
  • Leading Indicators: MQL velocity (not just volume), pipeline influence, sales cycle acceleration
  • Business Metrics: Whatever the CFO cares about—usually money
“If you can't prove incrementality,
you're taking credit for organic demand.”

The Devil is in the Details

Pillar 1: Delivery

Did the agency (or team) do its job managing the media investment?

A key role media teams play is ensuring campaigns are well-managed. This is why media management fees exist. Agencies should be experts at reaching the right audience at the right frequency. By highlighting delivery-related metrics like target audience penetration and unique reach per dollar spent, agencies have a concrete way to be held accountable for media programs.

  • Target Audience Penetration measures whether you’re reaching the right people or just any people. This goes beyond basic demographic targeting, which at best is inaccurate, and at worst could be detrimental to brand identity (read: racist & classist). Today’s martech/adtech tools and platforms enable a frighteningly sophisticated level of precision. Use platform audience match rates, third-party verification through ComScore or Nielsen, and overlap analysis to understand true audience quality. If you're below 50% on-target delivery, the problem is likely targeting...duh

  • Budget Stewardship tracks efficient spend across chosen partners and placements. This includes CPM benchmarking against category standards, frequency capping to avoid waste, and day-parting optimization based on audience behavior. Track viewability rates (you’re looking for >70%, folks) and fraud detection metrics. That 98% bounce rate means even less if you're paying 3x market rate for bot traffic.

  • Campaign Execution ensures proper pacing, placement quality, and technical delivery (ahem…naming conventions). Monitor as close to real-time as possible, optimize with velocity, and resolve issues quickly. Platform reporting APIs, custom reach and frequency studies, and spend efficiency metrics tell you if the basics are working before you worry about anything else.

Pillar 2: Engagement

Did audiences respond positively to the ad experiences themselves?

Engagement and consideration KPIs become critical in understanding how the target audience is interacting with messaging in-market. This is where you measure if the creative and message worked—before anyone hits a landing page.

  • Ad Engagement Rate goes beyond clicks to measure time spent with creative, interaction rates, and completion rates. For video, you’ll want >75% completion on :15s spots. For display, track deliberate interactions versus accidental clicks. Dwell time should exceed 3 seconds for considered engagement. Use attention measurement platforms like Lumen or TVision to understand genuine human attention — instead of just looking at served impressions in a vacuum.

  • Consideration Signal Activity identifies pre-defined behavioral patterns indicating genuine interest. Brand search lift within 24 hours of exposure (+20% is strong), direct traffic increases, and social amplification all indicate message resonance without requiring site navigation. Track branded search query variations, monitor social mentions tied to campaign themes, and measure lift in organic brand conversations.

  • Creative Resonance measures whether your message is landing through brand lift studies (available through Google, Meta, Amazon), sentiment analysis of ad-driven conversations, and panel-based research on message recall. If people remember your ad and can articulate your value proposition, that's success—regardless of whether they clicked around your website. Message recall >30%, positive sentiment >70%, and attention time above category benchmarks indicate effective creative.

Pillar 3: Impact

Did the media program influence business objectives?

CMOs, CFOs—the folks who sign checks—care most about impact. This pillar is often the most difficult for media teams. Especially for organizations with long or complicated buying cycles (B2B, large donations, luxury sales), the ability to see return on media investment can be convoluted and complicated.

  • Incremental Outcomes measure what happened because of media that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Use geo-experiments with test and control markets, holdout tests where you deliberately don't serve ads to a control group, and synthetic control methods for more sophisticated analysis. Incrementality testing platforms like Measured or SegmentStream can automate this. If you can't prove incrementality, you're just taking credit for demand that probably would have happened anyway.

  • Leading Indicators provide early signals that correlate with downstream revenue. Marketing-qualified lead velocity (not just volume), pipeline influence with proper attribution windows, and sales cycle acceleration all predict future success better than any site metric ever could. If you know how, use CausalImpact in R for rigorous statistical analysis, implement marketing mix modeling for channel interaction effects, and build custom attribution models with decay curves appropriate to your actual sales cycle.

  • Business Metrics track whatever the actual goal was—sales, leads, awareness, consideration. Connect media investment to real business outcomes through unified measurement platforms or build one out. Build attribution windows that match your business reality (B2B might need 180+ days), separate view-through from click-through contribution, and always tie back to incremental revenue, not just attributed revenue.

What Changes When You Measure Properly

When you start implementing this framework approach with clients, different patterns will emerge:

  • Media buying gets smarter. Rather than anxiously chasing low bounce rate placements, buyers can focus on match-making between target audiences and platforms best positioned to deliver genuine engagement with the ads themselves. Media management being judged on what it actually does rather than an arbitrarily assigned metric means real optimizations can happen—saving money, yes, but more importantly elevating impact.

  • Creative strategy improves. Teams design ads for clarity and value delivery rather than site stickiness. This improves user experience, prioritizes clear value propositions, and leads to more honest advertising.

  • Conversations change. Instead of "why is bounce rate so high?" the questions become "are we reaching the right people?" and "are they engaging with our ads?" and "is this moving the business forward?"

The measurement framework starts to shape the strategy. Better measurement meant better decisions.

Breaking the Cycle

I'm not picking on analytics teams. I get it. This shit can be hard, especially with economic pressures leading to scrutiny of every dollar. The pressure for immediate measurement accountability drives teams toward site analytics as media metrics. Executives want proof that media budgets are working. Agencies need KPIs that show progress. Site analytics like Bounce Rate are available, immediate, and feel concrete.

But measuring the wrong thing precisely doesn't make it right.

Site experience is the UX team’s job. Media effectiveness is the agency's job. Measuring one to judge the other helps nobody.

Yes, measuring media effectiveness this way requires more sophistication. Yes, it's harder to explain in executive summaries. Yes, some of these tools and methodologies cost money and require statistical knowledge.

The framework is simple. The implementation takes work. But the alternative is continuing to eat soup with a spatula while wondering why you’re still hungry.

Have your own bounce rate horror story? I'd love to hear it. Reply and let me know where you've seen this measurement confusion in the wild. Need help with your measurement framework? Let us help!

Paul Rakotoarisoa
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