Nextdoor is where neighbors come together to discover local businesses, share recommendations, and make decisions about the products and services around them. And all of that local engagement isn't just helping communities stay connected but it's also driving measurable results for brands.
To understand the impact Nextdoor advertising can have on brand outcomes, our Measurement team conducted a cross-study analysis of 64 US brand lift studies across verticals and campaign types.
Here's what we found and how to put it to work:
The results show that Nextdoor advertising works and reveal the specific practices that make it work best for your brand.
The single clearest signal in our data: format choices matter more than most advertisers realize.
Video is a full-funnel driver. Video is a full-funnel driver and one of the clearest findings in our dataset. Campaigns where video made up at least 50% of the creative set consistently outperformed video-light campaigns across every brand metric we measured, with mean lifts of +8.4pt Brand Awareness, +6.5pt Ad Recall, +5.8pt Brand Favorability, +3.1pt Brand Consideration, and +0.8pt Purchase Intent. That spread matters. Video isn't just a top-of-funnel play on Nextdoor; it moves people all the way down. The practical recommendation: make video at least half of your creative set.
Takeovers are the most reliable format we offer. Built for moments of critical intent - product launches, brand relaunches, seasonal windows where visibility is everything. Takeover delivers maximum share of voice in the Nextdoor feed, reaching neighbors when local relevance and brand recognition matter most. 100% of campaigns that included a Takeover drove positive brand lift, with mean lifts of +5.6pt Brand Awareness, +4.9pt Ad Recall, and +2.8pt Brand Favorability. For brand-critical moments, it's the safest bet on the platform.
Carousel is the format most underrated for brand-building. Campaigns using Carousel drive +7.6pt Brand Favorability compared to +2.6pt for other formats, a nearly 3× advantage. That gap makes intuitive sense: a 2-to-10-card unit lets a brand take a neighbor from awareness through to emotional connection in a single ad, telling a sequential story that a static image simply can't. The key is using it with intention cards that build on each other, not just a gallery of product shots.
Spotlight rounds out a strong format mix, reaching neighbors based on real-time local intent signals and delivering +5.8pt Brand Awareness and +5.2pt Ad Recall.
Format sets the stage. Creative determines what happens on it.
The most consistent creative finding in our data involves something deceptively simple: faces. Campaigns that showed people in their ads drove 1.4× more Brand Awareness and 1.9× more Brand Favorability than those that didn't, with a mean +6.7pt lift in Purchase Intent. Nextdoor is built around neighbors, and creative that reflects that feels native to the feed in a way that product-forward imagery doesn't.
Where and how you write your headline has measurable consequences. Including your brand name in the headline drives 29% higher Brand Consideration because on Nextdoor, the headline is often the first text a neighbor reads. If the brand name is there, you're building a mental link between the value proposition and the brand in a single read.
Localizing in the headline either a city or neighborhood name, not the body copy drives +7.3pt Brand Awareness and 2× Brand Favorability. Nextdoor is where neighbors expect to see their location; putting it in the headline is what triggers that recognition before they've read anything else. The city and neighborhood both work.
For video, getting your logo on screen in the first three seconds produces 1.4x higher Brand Awareness, averaging +11.7pt compared to +8.5pt when the brand appears later. The sequence that works: logo in seconds 0 to 3, key message in seconds 3 to 10, CTA in the final five seconds.
On messaging: On messaging, lead with permanent value over short-term discounts. Language anchored in lasting commitments such as "No Annual Fee," "No Contracts," price locks — drives roughly 2× more Brand Favorability than discount-based copy. When a promotional message isn't available, feature-benefit framing is the next-best angle and outperforms feature-only copy across every metric. The difference is one of relevance: "5G speeds" names a feature. "5G speeds — stream anything instantly" tells a neighbor why it matters to them.
Two more findings on creative volume and variety: Campaigns with 11 to 20 creatives consistently saw the strongest brand performance mean lifts of +8.5pt Brand Awareness, +6.9pt Ad Recall, and +7.1pt Brand Favorability. Below that range, you're limiting the platform's ability to optimize delivery and reducing the message diversity that drives headline lift. On that point: creative sets where at least 33% of headlines are unique produced 2.3× more Brand Favorability and 1.4× more Brand Awareness. The principle is simple: rotate tone, angle, and localization without changing the core claim.
On CTAs, "Learn More" outperformed every other option in our dataset, driving roughly 1.5x the Brand Favorability and 1.3x the Brand Awareness compared to all other CTAs combined.
One of the more counterintuitive findings in our dataset involves bid type. CPC campaigns are typically associated with performance advertising but outperformed standard CPM on brand metrics across the board: 1.2× more Brand Awareness, 1.4× more Ad Recall, and 1.4× more Brand Favorability. The reason comes down to intent. Neighbors on Nextdoor are deliberate when they scroll and a click signals genuine local interest. That intent alignment amplifies brand impact well beyond the click itself.
When it comes to CPM-based buying, not all CPM options are equal. CPM Max Impressions delivers 2× the Brand Favorability of standard CPM, making it the stronger choice whenever CPM buying is the requirement.
Nextdoor works for brand-building when campaigns are built for the platform. That means video-forward creative sets, formats that earn attention, headlines that localize and name the brand, faces that feel native to a neighborhood feed, and enough creative variety to stay fresh. The data behind each of these decisions comes from real campaigns, real neighbors, and real outcomes measured across brand lift studies.
Source: Nextdoor Brand Lift Meta-Analysis, April 2026. Based on 64 US brand lift studies, 90 campaigns, and 1,709 creatives from January 2025 through March 2026.