Marketers Breaking Beyond Measurement Challenges to the 'Fun Science'

Proving the effectiveness of ad campaigns to clients and, sometimes, the C-suite continues to become a more complex task, as challenges aplenty emerge in the measurement process. In a group chat at ADWEEK House during Advertising Week New York, industry leaders from ad platform Blis—who sponsored the session—wedding platform The Knot Worldwide, and creative agencies Taoti Creative and VML discussed the challenges that keep them up at night and the methods they use to solve those challenges. Speaking of challenges … Blis head of planning Lawrence Best kicked off the chat by discussing the emergence of channels like audio, connected TV, digital, and out-of-home, noting that each brings its own specializations and data sets. “You have the privacy initiatives across the industry, the reduction in ad IDs on iOS, you have cookies going away, as well, and all of this acts to remove this connective tissue that we're so used to and we so rely on to reach audiences across channels,” he added. Shrinking budgets was a factor for both Hyla London, senior account director at Taoti Creative, and Deanna Behrens, director, connections media, and commerce strategy at VML. London pointed out the need to be as efficient as possible, while Behrens said, “We're still trying to figure out how to merge everything into one deliverable that can actually make sense.” Behrens also lamented clients that deprioritize measurement and stay the course, only to rue the results at the end of the campaign. “We're in such a busy, fast-paced environment. We're constantly overlooking it," Behrens said. "But if you start to prioritize measurement in your day-to-day, then it makes you smarter. Your dollars are working harder for you, and it pays off in the end.” Changes and adapting to them Behrens provided an anecdotal look at how the world of measurement has changed, noting that people don’t necessarily go to stores anymore to make purchases and that technology has fueled impulse buying. She said testing different ways of thinking is essential. “How does that person go from point A to point B? You're going to be wrong, but there's going to be trial and error," she said. "If you're not testing and learning, you're doing the same thing over and over.” Marketing mix modeling is the go-to for Kiara Kempski, vice president of consumer marketing at The Knot Worldwide. “We have rigorous reviews as we start to scale investment," she said, "making sure that we're doing incrementality, whether that's against our search or our standard display buys, or as we move into video." First-party data With third-party cookies still facing potential deprecation, using first-party data also came up during the conversation. Best said that while he understands the hesitancy behind using it, “a key part of that is being able to intelligently aggregate it in a way that protects the consumer's privacy.” Behrens was a strong proponent, adding, “At the end of the day, if I use multiple vendors, I'm going to get different metrics. And while we like to say that it's all return on ad spend, everyone thinks about ... ROAS slightly different.” Most valuable metric Lifetime value was the metric that came up most often, with Kempski relying on it due to the nature of The Knot. “You become a member of our application, so we know how much it cost us to acquire you and each of the actions you took,” she said. “Once you become a member, every transaction from there is linked.” “How do you get to not cost per purchase, not cost per action, but true customer acquisition?” London said. “I refer to it as end-to-end conversion. My actual business goal is to not stop at, ‘I got 5 million views,’ but did I actually sell something, or influence someone to make a donation?” And while all of this might appear daunting, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. “True measurement is actually the fun science,” Kempski concluded.

Advertising Week

Marketers Breaking Beyond Measurement Challenges to the 'Fun Science'

Execs from Blis, The Knot Worldwide, Taoti Creative, and VML on providing an accurate picture despite new channels and shrinking budgets

David Cohen

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David Cohen