Advertisers across categories are putting more emphasis than ever on measuring and optimising effectiveness in their campaigns. But effectiveness means different things to different people, and there are many different ways of measuring it, making it difficult for media owners to argue their case.
A new report from industry researcher WARC released today gives interesting insight into where marketers’ heads are at. The data, based on surveys of over 1000 marketers globally, throws up some interesting findings.
Of all the metrics brands use to gauge effectiveness, brand metrics (as a category) are the most popular. Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed listed it as one of the most important measures of effectiveness, beating out ROI (54 percent), market share growth (42 percent), and market penetration/customer gain (40 percent). Price sits at the other end of the spectrum, picked by just seven percent of respondents (though whether this reflects the extent to which price directs ad spend is up for debate).
Meanwhile when it comes to the tools used to measure a campaign’s impact, brand health tracking studies are the most commonly used. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said they or their clients use brand health tracking studies, while econometrics and media mix modelling (MMM) are used by 45 percent, and attribution modelling is used by 42 percent.
Controlled experiments – such as conversion lift experiments, hold-out tests, and geo experiments – are less commonly used, with 36 percent of those surveyed saying they or their clients use controlled experiments to measure impact. But this is double the rate of the previous year, when only 18 percent reported using controlled experiments. Controlled experiments can be costly to run, but give some of the best data available when it comes to reliably demonstrating how a campaign or part of a campaign has met specific outcomes. And clearly an increasing number of advertisers see that as a cost worth paying.
Time for TV to prove its worth
There’s good news for video in this data – particularly the positivity around brand health metrics, where video campaigns are well placed to deliver positive returns.
This is reflected in WARC’s data on advertisers’ spending intention for 2025. When asked about which channels they expect to see increased investment in 2025, video has the highest net score (the percent who expect an increase, minus the percent who expect a decrease) of any channel, at +65 percent. Social media sat ten percentage points behind at +55 percent, while influencer/creator marketing rounded out the top three at +50 percent.
It’s a different story for TV. TV’s net score of -17 percent was the joint second lowest, tied with cinema while comfortably ahead of print at -42 percent.
There’s budget there to be won. Around two thirds of marketers said they expect their businesses to improve next year, while around a third expect to have higher marketing budgets (compared to 22 percent who expect lower budgets). And there’s plenty of data to show TV’s ability to deliver impact and value for money, even as linear audiences decrease. The question is whether the specific tools and metrics used by marketers to measure impact and effectiveness back that up, and lead to a resurgence in TV spending.
