London, UK/New York, NY – Despite multinational marketers having more measurement data and tools than ever before, they are still struggling to use these insights to impact their advertising decisions, according to new research from WFA (World Federation of Advertisers) and Ebiquity. The surprising findings reveal that while eight in 10 advertisers already run marketing mix modelling and brand lift studies, only 15% of leaders say effectiveness outputs are the primary driver of budget decisions.
The research shows tension between the CMO and CFO, as CFO’s expect media investment to be justified in the same terms as any other line on the P&L, yet only 14% of organizations report marketing and finance are fully aligned on what effectiveness means, and evaluation still skews to delivery metrics over commercial ones such as net profit (17%).
“As the C-Suite continues to demand that marketing be more accountable, marketers have invested an incredible amount on measurement tools and products to deliver this accountability,” explained Ruben Schreurs, CEO of Ebiquity. “But there remains a disconnect: even with a large and growing amount of data available, marketers are still slow to make decisions, measure the right things and less than 3% understand short-term and long-term performance versus brand impact.”
Despite this continued failure, three-quarters (75%) expect more than half of their budget allocation decisions to be measurement-led within three years even as 0% of companies surveyed claim best-in-class measurement capability.
Ebiquity surveyed 71 senior leaders across 10 sectors globally and conducted in-depth interviews with 27 leaders at major multinational advertisers, collectively responsible for $40bn in annual advertising spend. The research findings reveal key reasons for this disconnect:
- Data fragmentation: 46% of organizations sit at the lowest maturity levels for integrating data sources into a unified view;
- Channel expansion: Retail media, connected TV, influencer marketing, and AI-generated search have all outpaced the measurement infrastructure designed to assess them. Walled gardens are rated a severe or critical challenge by more than 60% of respondents; and
- Speed of insights: Decision cycles are compressing faster than measurement can currently keep pace with, and 54% of leaders say insights arrive too late to act on.
“The tools are there, the discipline is there, the coverage is there. Where marketers still struggle is to turn all those measurements into decisions that impact the business,” notes Sorin Patilinet, Global Marketing Effectiveness & Growth Strategies Innovation at PepsiCo.
To help brand leaders better understand how to get the most out of their media spend and crucially what to do when the methodologies, metrics and dashboards suggest diverging actions, WFA and Ebiquity are publishing The Paid Media Effectiveness Handbook. The handbook incorporates findings from the research with insight on how to implement connected systems that combine multiple sources of evidence to provide clear rules for how to build best in class measurement approaches.
“Paid media advertising is a $1.15 trillion industry, the size of Switzerland’s entire GDP, yet too much of that investment is still allocated based on vanity metrics and weak processes. We are giving this handbook to the industry because effectiveness should not be a competitive secret. Built with brands representing over $40 billion in annual paid media spend and our partners at WFA, it gives marketers a practical system to turn spend into genuine growth and full commercial alignment across their business,” added Schreurs.
Interviews with leading advertisers highlighted the growing challenges between the vast amounts of data available measuring paid media, and the related actions organizations are taking to harness that data to make smarter marketing decisions that deliver not just effective media, but brand growth.
“If you’re not able to act upon it, what’s the point? Measurement can very often be a retrospective thing. You need something in place that can help you understand what’s working here now and in the near future,” adds Kasper Madsen, Marketing Effectiveness Manager, Consumer Insights and Marketing Analytics at Pandora.
“The organisations that lead on effectiveness are not necessarily those with the most sophisticated tools. They are the ones that have built the operating systems, governance and commercial alignment needed to ensure measurement consistently reaches the decisions that matter,” says Tom Ashby, Global Lead, Media Services at WFA. “As scrutiny of marketing investment intensifies and new channels continue to emerge, the ability to turn evidence into action may become one of the defining competitive advantages for modern marketing organisations.”
