Measure CTV’s Impact on Search and Social Conversions

Here’s the scenario: Your customer sees your ad while streaming their favorite show. Three days later, they Google your brand name and click on the sponsored result at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). Once on your website, they make a purchase, and Google takes 100% of the credit.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. Last-click attribution has been obscuring the customer journey for years. 

Because walled gardens like Google, Meta, and Amazon control both the ad platform and the measurement methodology, they often claim credit for conversions that were sparked long before anyone searched or scrolled. This, in turn, creates a massive blind spot for marketers. 

As a result, those who’ve poured budget into brand-building efforts using top-of-funnel channels are left unable to prove their impact. This leads to misleading metrics and incomplete information at best. At worst, though, it causes marketing teams to deprioritize brand marketing altogether — funneling their entire budget into the very platforms that are gatekeeping attribution data.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

With Search and Social Impact from Strategus, marketers can connect search and social conversions back to the initial connected TV (CTV) ads or streaming audio ads that influenced that final click. By tracking users who were influenced by a top-of-funnel CTV ad but converted later via search or social, this attribution tool delivers a truer, fuller picture of campaign performance so that you can allocate ad budget smarter.

What Is Search and Social Impact?

Search and Social Impact is an attribution solution from Strategus built to give top-of-funnel touchpoints the credit they deserve.

It works by connecting the dots between your CTV, streaming audio, display, or online video ads and the conversions that occur later via paid search or paid social. Instead of defaulting to the last click, Search and Social Impact measures the full buyer’s journey — including the early touchpoints that sparked interest in the first place.

How Does Search and Social Impact Work?

Unlike traditional last-click attribution that only measures the final touchpoint, Search and Social Impact reveals the true influence of your upper-funnel campaigns by tracking the complete customer journey from initial ad exposure through final conversion.

Here’s how it works:

• Ad exposure: A Strategus ad reaches your audience through programmatic CTV, pre-roll, display, or audio.
  
  
• Tracking cross-channel conversions: We place a universal pixel on your brand's website to track unique identifiers for search and social clickthrough URLs, allowing us to identify where a site visitor or converter originated.
  
  
• Matching and measuring impact: As users visit or convert on your site via a paid search or social ad, we match the data with those who were previously exposed to a Strategus ad. This reveals the direct influence of your Strategus-managed campaigns on subsequent search and social conversions.

By providing a more holistic view of how your paid efforts are working together, Search and Social Impact allows you to understand the true impact of your media spend. Specifically, it allows you to capture:

• Paid search conversions from users who previously saw your CTV, display, streaming audio, and online video ads.
  
  
• Social media conversions from Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms that were influenced by programmatic placements on CTV, display, streaming audio, and online video.
  
  
• Cross-channel attribution that connects programmatic exposure to walled garden conversions.
  
  
• Lift measurement showing how much better search and social perform when combined with programmatic advertising.

The result? Verified attribution across platforms that typically operate in silos.

Joel Cox, our co-founder and EVP of innovation, explains: 

“Today’s performance marketing campaigns shouldn’t be tracked or analyzed in silos. Instead, advertisers must be able to understand the impact of each individual action within the context of the entire campaign. As marketers increasingly rely on CTV as a key component of their marketing campaigns, our Search and Social Impact solution allows them to track the impact of each CTV advertisement, providing new levels of clarity into brand lift and campaign efficacy.”

With Search and Social Impact, there’s no need for guessing or one-channel bias. Instead, you get a clear view into what’s really driving performance.

Even better, Search and Social Impact isn’t limited to Google or Meta. With proper UTM tracking, brands can extend this visibility to channels like TikTok, Pinterest, and even email marketing.

Why Measuring Search and Social Impact Matters

At its core, Search and Social Impact rebalances attribution by providing greater visibility. It shifts focus away from short-sighted metrics and gives brand-building campaigns the data they’ve been missing — enabling smarter optimizations and stronger ROI across the full funnel.

This allows brands and agencies to take a more informed approach to media planning, which paves the way for more testing, better optimization, and, ultimately, stronger campaign performance. 

Specifically, marketers can use this tool to:

• Prove upper-funnel value: Demonstrate the measurable impact of brand awareness and consideration campaigns that traditionally struggle to show direct ROI.
  
  
• Reveal true campaign ROI: See how your programmatic campaigns directly influence search and social performance, providing a complete view of customer acquisition costs and lifetime value.
  
  
• Optimize the media mix: Understand which combination of channels drives the highest conversion rates, allowing you to allocate budget based on actual performance rather than last-click assumptions.
  
  
• Breaking down walled garden barriers: Get insights into how your campaigns perform across closed ecosystems, even when platforms don't want to share attribution data.

But how does this all tie to advertising success? It all comes down to the cross-platform agility that’s made possible with greater campaign transparency.

Understanding CTV’s Halo Effect: Real-World Success Stories

The wider a campaign is — meaning the more paid touchpoints used across CTV, online video, streaming audio, search, and social — the better it will perform. And the beauty of CTV is that it supercharges your entire strategy by boosting conversion across every subsequent touchpoint.

This “halo effect” of CTV, wherein branding efforts directly and significantly improve the conversion rates of lower-funnel search and social campaigns, is well documented. The Trade Desk reports, “we found that when a user saw a CTV ad, there was a 232% increase in the likelihood that they would Google our brand and click on our paid search ad.”

Likewise, at Strategus, we’ve tracked thousands of search and social conversions that were directly influenced by CTV ads. Below are a couple examples.

University Cuts Cost Per Conversion in Half With CTV + Search Integration

When a Virginia-based university wanted to drive prospective students to their website, they turned to Strategus for a highly targeted, full-funnel campaign. By incorporating CTV and streaming audio into what began as a display-only strategy, the university not only doubled down on reach — they cut their cost per conversion in half.

With Search and Social Impact attribution enabled, the team was able to track more than 13,800 conversions that started with a Strategus ad and ended with a paid search click. Over 4,000 of those visitors took the next step, submitting a request for more information.

Read Case Study → 

Chevrolet Dealership Tracks Over 3,000 Conversions From CTV

A family-run Chevrolet dealership partnered with Strategus to measure the influence of their CTV campaign on conversions from paid search and social. By running a full-funnel strategy and activating Search and Social Impact, they were able to tie over 3,000 conversions directly to users who saw a CTV ad first, then clicked on a paid ad later.

Even better? The success led to a 37% budget increase mid-campaign and a deeper understanding of what was actually driving traffic and revenue.

Read Case Study → 

Get Started With Strategus

Smarter attribution leads to smarter spending, which is why every business deserves to know what's really driving conversions. 

At Strategus, we provide the tools and expertise required to see beyond last-click assumptions and get a holistic picture of what’s driving advertising performance. From there, we roll up our sleeves and work with you to make campaign optimizations based on what the data show.

Ready to connect all the dots across your paid media channels and see how CTV, search, and social are working together? Contact us today to get started.