Brand awareness is measured in several ways, from whether people recognize a brand or advertisement to whether they recall a message or associate a sponsor with an event. The statistics below show how awareness moved in named campaigns and tracker periods, with geography and measurement dates kept explicit.
Contents
- What awareness can influence
- Media formats and brand lift
- Sponsorship awareness across markets
- Out-of-home campaign results
- U.S. advertiser-tracker gains
- United Kingdom and Canada tracker results
- Additional international results
What awareness can influence
Awareness is an upper-funnel measure, but the available evidence connects it with both brand equity and sales. In Nielsen’s Top brands are like Olympic athletes, a 1-point gain in top-funnel brand equity metrics such as awareness and relevance drives a 1% increase in sales. This is a reported relationship from Nielsen’s campaign research, not a universal conversion rule for every brand or channel.
Nielsen’s emerging-media report also separates the components of brand lift. Brand recall influences 38.7% of brand lift in emerging media, making it the largest influence in that report. Baseline awareness influences 37.5% of brand lift, just behind recall. These figures describe the share of lift associated with the measured factors; they do not say that every campaign will produce the same result.
For a personal brand, the distinction matters. Being recognized is not identical to having a message remembered. A professional may be familiar to an audience while still failing to be recalled when a specific skill, service, or point of view is needed. The Nielsen figures suggest tracking both the starting level of awareness and the audience’s ability to recall the brand or message.
Media formats and brand lift
Nielsen’s emerging-media report provides several quantified comparisons across formats:
- Podcast ads can boost brand awareness by 13 percentage points.
- Influencer marketing can improve brand awareness by 9 percentage points.
- Branded content can improve brand awareness by 10 percentage points.
Nielsen’s separate Podcasting Today study reports a 12-percentage-point increase in brand awareness from podcast advertising. The two podcast figures come from different Nielsen studies, so they should be treated as separate reported results rather than combined into an average.
Cross-media combinations can also change recall. In Nielsen’s How Shoppers Look, Watch and Listen for New Products, TV plus digital advertising increased brand recall by 33% versus TV alone. The same comparison found a 45% increase in message recall for TV plus digital advertising versus TV alone.
| Measure | Reported result | Comparison or context |
|---|---|---|
| Brand awareness from podcast ads | +13 percentage points | Nielsen emerging-media report |
| Brand awareness from influencer marketing | +9 percentage points | Nielsen emerging-media report |
| Brand awareness from branded content | +10 percentage points | Nielsen emerging-media report |
| Brand awareness from podcast advertising | +12 percentage points | Nielsen Podcasting Today |
| Brand recall | +33% | TV plus digital versus TV alone |
| Message recall | +45% | TV plus digital versus TV alone |
The format results are useful as benchmarks, not promises. A podcast awareness result is a percentage-point change, while the TV and digital results are percentage increases versus a TV-only baseline. Those units are different and should not be ranked as though they measure the same thing.
Sponsorship awareness across markets
Nielsen’s Top brands are like Olympic athletes reports several changes in awareness of Olympic associations between 2021 and May 2024. Visa’s overall awareness of its Olympic association rose from a little more than 40% ahead of Tokyo 2021 to 43% in May 2024, a 3-point gain.
The movement differed by country. In France, Visa’s Olympic-association awareness increased from 29% in 2021 to 31% in May 2024, a 2-point gain. In Australia, it increased from 33% to 38%, a 5-point gain. In the United States, it increased from 37% to 49%, a 12-point gain.
| Sponsor | Measurement geography | Earlier measurement | Later measurement | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Visa | Overall, ahead of Tokyo 2021 to May 2024 | A little more than 40% | 43% | 3 points |
| Visa | France, 2021 to May 2024 | 29% | 31% | 2 points |
| Visa | Australia, 2021 to May 2024 | 33% | 38% | 5 points |
| Visa | United States, 2021 to May 2024 | 37% | 49% | 12 points |
Other sponsors also moved between 2021 and 2024 in the same Nielsen report. P&G’s Olympic-association awareness rose by 2 points, Samsung’s rose by 7 points, and Airbnb’s rose by 9 points. The supplied result does not state the starting and ending percentages for these three brands, so only the reported point changes are shown.
These sponsorship figures illustrate why geography belongs beside an awareness statistic. Visa’s 12-point U.S. increase is not interchangeable with its 2-point increase in France. Both are valid measurements, but they describe different audiences and different market movement over the same broad sponsorship period.
Out-of-home campaign results
Nielsen’s Analyzing Out of Home Impact reports results for Luxottica’s 2023 out-of-home campaign. The campaign delivered an unaided-awareness result 3.6 times higher than the 2022 result. It also delivered a 4.0% uplift in unaided awareness and a 1.9% uplift in purchase intent.
The same analysis found that Luxottica’s 2023 campaign was 1.31 times more efficient than the 2022 campaign on a national basis. The efficiency comparison and the 3.6-times awareness-result comparison are distinct measures: one describes relative efficiency, while the other compares the unaided-awareness result.
For readers building a professional or personal brand, unaided awareness is especially notable because it concerns recognition without a prompted list. Still, the supplied Nielsen result does not define every survey question or campaign exposure condition. It should therefore be used as a campaign benchmark, alongside the stated 4.0% awareness uplift and 1.9% purchase-intent uplift, rather than as a general out-of-home average.
U.S. advertiser-tracker gains
YouGov’s U.S. advertiser tracker recorded the following Ad Awareness changes in 2026. Each figure is a change between the stated dates, and the percentages are the tracker readings at those dates.
| Brand | Dates in the U.S. tracker | Earlier | Later | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung | March 1–30, 2026 | 21.5% | 28.5% | +7.0 points |
| Neutrogena | March 1–28, 2026 | 15.9% | 22.5% | +6.6 points |
| Burger King | March 6–29, 2026 | 28.9% | 35.4% | +6.5 points |
| Budweiser | February 1–28, 2026 | 25.9% | 36.8% | +10.9 points |
| State Farm | February 3–28, 2026 | 36.7% | 42.7% | +6.0 points |
| Super Mario Bros. | February 1–28, 2026 | 5.8% | 11.3% | +5.5 points |
| Planet Fitness | January 1–28, 2026 | 16.45% | 25.38% | +8.94 points |
| Trivago | January 1–29, 2026 | 15.44% | 24.33% | +8.88 points |
| Mint Mobile | January 1–29, 2026 | 18.63% | 26.10% | +7.46 points |
YouGov’s U.S. advertiser tracker also reported earlier 2025 movements. Humana’s Ad Awareness rose 7.1 points from 13.6% on October 26, 2025, to 20.8% on November 25, 2025. Walmart’s Ad Awareness rose 6.6 points during November 2025 in the U.S.; the supplied result does not provide the two endpoint readings. Starbucks rose 5.9 points from 35.9% on October 31, 2025, to 41.8% on November 25, 2025.
For August 2025 in the U.S., American Eagle’s Ad Awareness rose 15.6 points from 5.9% on July 26 to 21.5% on August 25. NFL Network rose 7.2 points from 6.1% to 13.4% over the same dates. Head & Shoulders rose 5.5 points from 17.7% to 23.2% over that period. The American Eagle result is the largest reported U.S. point increase in this set, but it begins from a relatively low 5.9% reading, which is why starting awareness should remain visible next to the change.
United Kingdom and Canada tracker results
YouGov’s UK advertiser tracker reported several 2025 changes. webuyanycar.com’s Ad Awareness rose 7.9 points from 13.8% on July 26, 2025, to 21.7% on August 25, 2025. Jet2holidays’ rose 6.6 points from 39.2% to 45.8% between July 26 and August 25, 2025.
In February 2025, Cadbury Creme Egg’s Ad Awareness rose 9.1 points from 5.4% on January 26 to 14.5% on February 24. webuyanycar.com’s rose 5.7 points from 20.2% on January 27 to 25.9% on February 24. Gillette’s rose 5.4 points from 14.5% on February 7 to 19.9% on February 24.
YouGov’s Canada tracker reported these August 2025 changes: American Eagle rose 7.5 points from 4.0% on August 1 to 11.5% on August 25; IKEA rose 5.4 points from 15.1% on July 26 to 20.5% on August 25; and Old Spice rose 5.1 points from 17.0% on July 27 to 22.1% on August 15.
For October 2025 in Canada, Smirnoff’s Ad Awareness rose 6.1 points from 9.7% on September 26 to 15.8% on October 18. TD Canada Trust rose 5.5 points during October 2025, and A&W rose 5.2 points during October 2025; endpoint readings were not supplied for either result.
Additional international results
YouGov’s Canada advertiser tracker recorded further gains in April 2026. Nike Running Club’s Ad Awareness rose 8.5 points from 5.1% on April 1 to 13.6% on April 29. Rogers / Rogers Wireless rose 6.9 points from 31.3% on April 1 to 38.1% on April 21. Amazon rose 6.4 points from 33.3% on April 11 to 39.7% on April 25.
The supplied YouGov Thailand advertiser-tracker result reports that Nescafe’ in Thailand had an 11.7-point Ad Awareness increase, from 38.3% on April 2, 2026, to 50.1% on April 30, 2026. This is the largest reported point change in the international results here, while the U.S. American Eagle result is the largest reported U.S. change.
Across these tracker examples, the measurement window ranges from less than a month to roughly a month, and the geographies include the U.S., UK, Canada, and Thailand. The figures are therefore best read as dated market snapshots. They show how awareness readings changed for named advertisers in specific periods, not a forecast of future brand performance or a universal benchmark for personal brands.