Why advertisers need a new omnichannel measurement approach amid a disconnected landscape

Modern display and mobile measurement solutions are still heavily dependent on identifiers and involve assembling separate channel reports and a worryingly large amount of data extrapolation. This approach is costly, time-consuming and yields results lacking precision and reliability. This will continue to worsen as it becomes increasingly difficult to connect audience profiles across the internet and various channels, making it almost impossible to understand the overall impact of omnichannel campaigns.

To make matters worse, the current approach isn’t measuring what really matters to marketers. It’s reliant on proxy performance metrics, like CTR and last-click attributed conversion rates, which (while they play a role in understanding ad performance) are often relied on as the only metrics of success in place of any true business outcomes, like incremental sales or true customer acquisition. 

Advertisers need a new approach to measurement that accounts for new behaviors and media habits, and solves current limitations while measuring the metrics teams truly need.

Understanding context: Previously expanded programmatic strategies now require teams to readjust

Omnichannel planning and buying are now considered table stakes, necessary to capture current audiences across the multiple touchpoints of their daily lives. Savvy advertisers have adapted accordingly, expanding their programmatic strategies (particularly across emerging channels like CTV, audio and DOOH) to ensure their ads are unmissable. However, a parallel industry shift, the dwindling use of cookies and IDs, has affected the connective tissue across those channels, consequently impacting the scale, performance and long-term viability of advertising strategies that rely solely on personal identifiers.

These two trends reflect changing consumer behaviors and media consumption habits over the last few years, as well as an increased desire from consumers to limit and control the use of personal data. This leads back to the notion that the industry needs a more sustainable personalized advertising solution that delivers valuable metrics. 

And no challenge is more significant than the one around measurement. Advertisers need to keep proving the incremental value of the media dollars flowing throughout the industry, however, that’s not possible when the data they’ve used to prove it over the last several years isn’t there anymore.

Existing frameworks bring marketers closer to multi-channel ad performance but aren’t fully sufficient

The first step for marketers is recognizing that the industry must collectively innovate and challenge its existing mindset. 

Two measurement-specific hot topics — multi-touch attribution and media mix modeling — offer potential frameworks for understanding advertising performance across multiple channels, but both have challenges. MTA sheds light on the impact of individual touchpoints on a campaign but is analyzed at the channel level (versus total campaign performance across all channels) and is largely reliant on cookies and IDs. 

MMM, on the other hand, shows the overall impact of a company’s marketing mix on its outcomes but often involves building complex, expensive statistical models that can take years to put together and only examine effectiveness on a macro level.

The future of measurement requires an industry-wide framework shift

Marketers need a new alternative measurement solution — an industry-wide breakthrough — that solves the underlying currents affecting the present landscape. 

To break through the limitations plaguing the industry, the future of measurement needs to be part of a bigger framework shift. That means measurement cannot depend on cookies or IDs and marketers need to shift away from a one-to-one attribution mentality. It also requires connecting the disconnected across all campaign channels, whether that’s an ad seen on a TV at home, on a mobile phone when on-the-go or on an OOH screen. Additionally, it must cut through to measure what matters to marketers and their businesses, instead of focusing on proxy metrics. 

As advertisers reduce their use of cookies and personal IDs while increasing the programmatic channels utilized, establishing a new measurement approach that meets new consumer behaviors and media habits and solves current limitations is vital. 

This framework is the only way forward, and the technology is already there to back it up. Using this as the post-identifier foundation for digital marketing, marketers can begin making sense again of a landscape that has become both scarcer in terms of useful data and overcrowded with meaningless noise. 

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