Good morning, Marketer, how do you measure marketing success?
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Whoever first said that, in retrospect, had it easy. Ad dollars were being spent on billboards or radio and TV. Simple times. Today’s ever-expanding, multi-channel digital environment makes it much harder to attribute value to countless touchpoints with confidence.
There’s some agreement about that, but much disagreement on what it means. Some say traditional attribution modeling is essential if marketing is to be accountable. Whether a first-touch, last-touch or multi-touch model is used, measurement is possible; which, in turn, makes predicting future success possible.
Others suggest abandoning predictive modeling in favor of an always-on approach that optimizes campaigns and moves dollars around in close to real-time. The question they emphasize is not “What worked last time?” but “What’s working now?” The debate isn’t going to be resolved any time soon.
P.S. A reminder: Register free for the upcoming MarTech virtual conference.
Kim Davis
Editorial Director
