Marketing Metrics: Just 9% of Marketers Feel Their Organizations Truly Understand Attribution

Marketing measurement challenges. In today’s Monday Morning Metrics, we highlight new research that shows that marketers are no closer to solving the measurement puzzle. 

The new report, The State of Marketing Measurement, Attribution and Data Management by ClickZ (in partnership with digital measurement company, fospha) examines some of the current trends in marketing measurement. It provides a unique view of the challenges of brands along with tips and tricks to make better-informed decisions.

One of the more telling data points from the survey is that a very small minority (just 9%) of marketers believe their organization has an “excellent” understanding of multi-touch attribution. This isn’t surprising. In the Skai blog post, Measuring Up: 5 Gaps of Attribution Measurement, our Tomer Shadi outlined some of the issues that marketers have with attribution and why brands are looking for other options, including incrementality testing, which is becoming the new hot buzzword in the marketing industry.

Marketing Measurement Challenges

Other insights in the report include:

Businesses are using 7 separate technologies to extract insights from their data, on average. As stated in the recent Skai post Maybe There Simply Isn’t a Silver Bullet for Marketing Measurement, having many different data inputs into your measurement approach is a good idea in order to make sense of the insights.

Over one third (34%) of survey respondents believe that their company analyzes less than 20% of all consumer data available to them. BIG DATA is no joke. It is one of the biggest contributors to marketing measurement challenges. As data sets even get bigger over time, marketers need to leverage technology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to pull out useful information.

Just 33% of brands believe that their current measurement solutions perform accurate attribution of all media and data. This is one of the biggest marketing measurement challenges: having something in place that you are relying on to make sense of your efforts which you still can’t rely on to point to due north.

Only 32.5% of businesses have a clear view of the customer lifetime value (CLV) of their customers. Sophisticated marketers calculate the lifetime value of their marketing ROI so that they can optimize their advertising campaigns to what is truly driving long-term value and not short-term returns.

43% are “likely” or “very likely” to invest in a new marketing measurement technology in the next 12 months. Of course! In almost every survey on marketing measurement challenges over the years, brands have reported that they haven’t yet found the ultimate solution. They are still looking.

The most important feature of a marketing measurement technology for brands is “quick access to actionable insights.” With the state of business evolving so rapidly, brands need to be able to drive results NOW. For a measurement technology solution to gain traction, it must be able to deliver immediate ROI.

29% of survey respondents use attribution technology on all digital marketing campaigns. Even with all of the known issues around attribution, it is still one of the leading approaches for marketing measurement challenges.