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What hinders proper measurement and in turn effectiveness.

Alastair Mack

According to an IAB study in 2018, 83% of brands view cross-media measurement as their single biggest measurement challenge.  This will always be a challenge, clearly still as hot a topic now as it was when John Wanamaker was trying to figure out which half of his advertising he was wasting over a century ago.  The more things change the more they stay the same.

When embarking on improving measurement and effectiveness it’s clear there is an overwhelming amount of opinion pieces, data, research and analysis, both external and internal to a business. It can roughly be split into three categories – consumer/industry, category and company. Consumer/industry research is key for improving our knowledge of effectiveness, measurement and the media landscape. Category research can then focus this in on the vertical. However, the most important questions are what works for the company now and will for the foreseeable.

Company reports on what’s working now and what worked recently can sometimes manifest themselves in either a spreadsheet of every conceivable metric - from bounce rate, page views, CTR to sales - to an overly simple bar and line chart showing money was spent and sales went up. Both approaches are often too short-termist and will struggle to deliver actionable insight.

Overly simplistic, overly complicated and short-termist reports aren’t the only internal issues. A company needs time and people in place to deliver robust measurement. Whilst the first port of call might be the marketing communications team they are often flat out formulating a strategy, developing integrated creative and managing media. The optimum solution is probably a team dedicated to it, not siloed but working closely with communications, sales, product management and other key stakeholders. A separate budget should be ring-fenced to invest in the required research and tools to deliver insight and recommendations.

Once resource in terms of people and budget are in place honest questions need to be asked:

  • Are marketing decisions based on data, research and analysis or opinion and our own bias?
  • Do we really want to know what’s working and what isn’t? It could lead to uncomfortable truths
  • Do we have an effectiveness culture or is it busyness over business*? If not can we foster one that will not be bolted-on and then ignored?
  • Provocatively, do our agencies and consultants have our best interests at heart?

With an understanding of the relevance and benefit of external and internal information, resource in place and politics overcome – although in the knowledge perfection won’t be reached! - steps can be taken to improve cross-media measurement and in turn marketing effectiveness.

  1. Put key measurement tools in place to build a campaign/annual reporting framework. Align this model to business and communication objectives. Ensure the relevant stakeholders have bought into this, top-down and bottom-up. Example elements of this model:
    • i. Overall ROI & ROI by channel (Econometrics/MMM)
    • ii. Ad recall, awareness, consideration, desire WITH correlation to sales (Brand metrics, continually measured)
    • iii. Creative review (Consumer research)**
    • iv. Brand lift study(ies)
    • v. Media (owner) performance
    • vi. Custom, data-driven digital attribution
    • vii. Controlled experiments
    • viii. Owned digital media performance
    • ix. Journey analytics (e.g. from a Customer Data Platform)
    • x. Leads and sales
    • xi. Price, profitability, market share
    • xii. Insight and recommendations/actions
  2. Understand the limitations in your model/data and look to fill any gaps
  3. Understand the model works together, in the short and long term and across the customer lifecycle
  4. Ensure the model can be replicated. Internal benchmarks can then be built and the process is continuous

The above will bring the science of marketing to the fore, the crucial commercial side. The art - the power of brilliant, attention-grabbing creative goes hand-in-hand.

**N.B. According to a Data2Decisions Study, Creative is the 2nd biggest driver of advertising profitability. 1st is brand size which isn’t really in short/mid-term brand control. Creative is far more important than budget setting by geography, product portfolio or media channel. Neilsen concur: 50-80% of advertising ROI is driven by the creative work. 

Sources, inspiration and further reading: