An approach to evaluation of digital data in public health campaigns

Mass media campaigns for public health often rely heavily on digital media and advertising tools that are customarily the domain of marketing professionals and primarily used for commercial purposes. Digital campaigns also generate a myriad of metrics, which can pose both a challenge and opportunity for scientists wishing to leverage these data for research and evaluation.

The aim of this article is to provide practical guidance for the evaluation of paid media campaigns, with a focus on analyzing digital data generated directly by the campaign.

Building off the Centers for Disease Control framework for program evaluation, we describe a step-by-step process for evaluation tailored to the unique considerations of digital and paid media campaigns. We contextualize our guidance with our experience evaluating a suicide prevention campaign conducted from 2021 to 2023 that focused on firearms safety in U.S. military veterans.

Key terminology, conceptual models, and selected findings from our evaluation are presented alongside our guidance.

We conclude with key lessons learned and offer recommendations that are broadly applicable to evaluation of other digital campaigns.