Press How to Create and Manage a Media Budget
What is a media plan and budget?
A media plan is the course of action a marketing team will take in order to maximize sales, convert leads, and increase the bottom line. Media planning requires an in depth understanding of your target audience and the media channels that best serve your campaigns. The media planner can hold various titles, but regardless of title will have experience in and knowledge of media, content creation, marketing, and budgeting. The components of a media plan include audience, marketing budget, conversion goals, definition of success, message frequency, and message reach. Using these components as a checklist will provide a solid foundation to reference as you move to execute your media plan.
A media budget is exactly what it sounds like – the amount of money allocated to marketing efforts through traditional and digital forms of media. Your media budget, when well researched, will facilitate execution of your media plan. To maximize your dollars, it is important to research what forms of media perform best with your target audience. As ad spend in digital media continues to rise, you may want to consider social media marketing costs and how a social media budget can improve your reach. For example, CBO Facebook ads may work in your favor as they are estimated to have a 9-10% conversion rate (higher than Google ads).
Why is budget important in media?
Budget is important in media for several reasons. Budgeting for media spend will help prevent overspending or wasting dollars on ineffective media channels.
Generally speaking, about 7-8% of a company’s gross revenue should be allocated to marketing and advertising. At 2 million dollars of gross revenue, that’s $140,000-$160,000. Whether those numbers seem high or low, if we look only at social media marketing costs companies are spending on average $72,000-$126,000 per year. If half or almost all of your budget is spent on social media campaign costs, it is vital to know which channels are most effective at reaching your target audience.
Media budgeting also provides direction of ad spend on the proper product at the proper time. Your budget will determine if an ad will run continuously throughout a campaign or intermittently. Ultimately, a media budget aligns marketing efforts with business goals, which in turn should secure upper management approval with little pushback.
How do you manage a media budget?
Managing a media budget requires knowledge of and confidence in the budget itself. For starters, you cannot manage what you cannot see. Selecting a budget template or software will help keep things organized and there are plenty of options to choose from. You will also need to have a good understanding of the current marketing strategy and campaigns. Campaigns are determined by budget, and in order to track spending you will need to know which campaigns are running and which are up next.
Of all factors to consider, it is imperative that you manage your budget based on data. Many companies use marketing attribution softwares to help track this data, and the information provided is a great way to take the temperature of your media budget and plan. Lastly, assess if your goals are being met. Keep in mind that one of the primary objectives of the media budget is to facilitate execution of business goals. Frequently monitoring your campaigns and conversion rates provides insight to answer the question, “Are we meeting our goals?”
What are the three objectives of a media plan?
The three objectives of a media plan are to establish purpose, audience, and reach.
The general purpose of a media plan is to support the larger marketing objectives. More specific purposes may be to generate brand awareness, or encourage users to share a specific piece of content that has been optimized to perform well.
Audience is usually already defined by the time you get to media planning, but your target consumers can vary depending on the form of media. Knowing who will be reading, consuming, or engaging with your content and understanding their buying habits will help convert leads and nurture existing consumer-brand relationships.
Reach depends greatly on your target audience and the media channels they consume. For example, your reach using radio ads may be significantly lower than pulsing social media ads. When it comes to reach, frequency is the most important factor in increasing visibility. There are several approaches to publishing frequency and each comes with an associated cost, so it is important to identify which approach(es) will be deployed to best plan your media budget.
How do you verify a media budget?
Verifying a media budget is achieved through ad verification. Fraudulent ads have become increasingly common with the rise of bots and can waste budget dollars by redirecting a target consumer to an irrelevant or malicious site. Ad verification is a relatively new technology in digital advertising that relies on an impartial third party vendor to track metrics like viewability, ad placement, geotargeting, fraudulent activity, and site context.
What is a good media strategy?
A good media strategy can be characterized by five elements: smart goals/objectives, target audience assessment, defined media channels, organized budget and campaign planning, and performance measurement.
- Goals and objectives – should align with business objectives and be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.
- Audience assessment – should give you actionable insights on your target consumers’ interests, demographics, geographics, and most used media channels.
- Media channels – should be determined based on the audience assessment and optimized for SEO and SMO.
- Budget/campaign planning – should provide an overview of where and how budget dollars are being spent and a timeline for when campaigns (and associated ads) are to be launched and ended.
- Performance measurement – should provide analytics across all media channels to assess how your ads are performing.
At Measured, our enterprise-grade software delivers cross-channel source of truth reporting powered by expertly designed incrementality experiments for every marketing channel.
With mExperiment, we can determine incrementality, identify waste and inform scale opportunities across all your addressable and non-addressable channels. Book a demo today to learn more!
What is a media plan and budget?
A media plan is the course of action a marketing team will take in order to maximize sales, convert leads, and increase the bottom line. Media planning requires an in depth understanding of your target audience and the media channels that best serve your campaigns. The media planner can hold various titles, but regardless of title will have experience in and knowledge of media, content creation, marketing, and budgeting. The components of a media plan include audience, marketing budget, conversion goals, definition of success, message frequency, and message reach. Using these components as a checklist will provide a solid foundation to reference as you move to execute your media plan.
A media budget is exactly what it sounds like – the amount of money allocated to marketing efforts through traditional and digital forms of media. Your media budget, when well researched, will facilitate execution of your media plan. To maximize your dollars, it is important to research what forms of media perform best with your target audience. As ad spend in digital media continues to rise, you may want to consider social media marketing costs and how a social media budget can improve your reach. For example, CBO Facebook ads may work in your favor as they are estimated to have a 9-10% conversion rate (higher than Google ads).
Why is budget important in media?
Budget is important in media for several reasons. Budgeting for media spend will help prevent overspending or wasting dollars on ineffective media channels.
Generally speaking, about 7-8% of a company’s gross revenue should be allocated to marketing and advertising. At 2 million dollars of gross revenue, that’s $140,000-$160,000. Whether those numbers seem high or low, if we look only at social media marketing costs companies are spending on average $72,000-$126,000 per year. If half or almost all of your budget is spent on social media campaign costs, it is vital to know which channels are most effective at reaching your target audience.
Media budgeting also provides direction of ad spend on the proper product at the proper time. Your budget will determine if an ad will run continuously throughout a campaign or intermittently. Ultimately, a media budget aligns marketing efforts with business goals, which in turn should secure upper management approval with little pushback.
How do you manage a media budget?
Managing a media budget requires knowledge of and confidence in the budget itself. For starters, you cannot manage what you cannot see. Selecting a budget template or software will help keep things organized and there are plenty of options to choose from. You will also need to have a good understanding of the current marketing strategy and campaigns. Campaigns are determined by budget, and in order to track spending you will need to know which campaigns are running and which are up next.
Of all factors to consider, it is imperative that you manage your budget based on data. Many companies use marketing attribution softwares to help track this data, and the information provided is a great way to take the temperature of your media budget and plan. Lastly, assess if your goals are being met. Keep in mind that one of the primary objectives of the media budget is to facilitate execution of business goals. Frequently monitoring your campaigns and conversion rates provides insight to answer the question, “Are we meeting our goals?”
What are the three objectives of a media plan?
The three objectives of a media plan are to establish purpose, audience, and reach.
The general purpose of a media plan is to support the larger marketing objectives. More specific purposes may be to generate brand awareness, or encourage users to share a specific piece of content that has been optimized to perform well.
Audience is usually already defined by the time you get to media planning, but your target consumers can vary depending on the form of media. Knowing who will be reading, consuming, or engaging with your content and understanding their buying habits will help convert leads and nurture existing consumer-brand relationships.
Reach depends greatly on your target audience and the media channels they consume. For example, your reach using radio ads may be significantly lower than pulsing social media ads. When it comes to reach, frequency is the most important factor in increasing visibility. There are several approaches to publishing frequency and each comes with an associated cost, so it is important to identify which approach(es) will be deployed to best plan your media budget.
How do you verify a media budget?
Verifying a media budget is achieved through ad verification. Fraudulent ads have become increasingly common with the rise of bots and can waste budget dollars by redirecting a target consumer to an irrelevant or malicious site. Ad verification is a relatively new technology in digital advertising that relies on an impartial third party vendor to track metrics like viewability, ad placement, geotargeting, fraudulent activity, and site context.
What is a good media strategy?
A good media strategy can be characterized by five elements: smart goals/objectives, target audience assessment, defined media channels, organized budget and campaign planning, and performance measurement.
- Goals and objectives – should align with business objectives and be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.
- Audience assessment – should give you actionable insights on your target consumers’ interests, demographics, geographics, and most used media channels.
- Media channels – should be determined based on the audience assessment and optimized for SEO and SMO.
- Budget/campaign planning – should provide an overview of where and how budget dollars are being spent and a timeline for when campaigns (and associated ads) are to be launched and ended.
- Performance measurement – should provide analytics across all media channels to assess how your ads are performing.
At Measured, our enterprise-grade software delivers cross-channel source of truth reporting powered by expertly designed incrementality experiments for every marketing channel.
With mExperiment, we can determine incrementality, identify waste and inform scale opportunities across all your addressable and non-addressable channels. Book a demo today to learn more!
Original Publisher
Ready to see how trusted measurement can help your brand make smarter media decisions?
Press It’s the Right Time to Invest In the Future of Measurement
At Measured, our stated mission has always been to help brands grow. We promise the brands we work with that we will always deliver best-in-class incrementality measurement solutions – even in a media environment that refuses to stand still. It was that unwavering commitment that ultimately drove us to raise $21M in funding from Telescope Partners.
Attribution has been an unsolved problem for decades and the recent stream of technology and privacy changes across the industry have pushed the ongoing issues to a breaking point. Measurement methods that require tracking users are not effective or accurate. The industry needs to move on to a future-proof measurement approach that everyone can trust, every time.
After spending most of our careers trying to force various multi-touch attribution models to deliver on an ambitious promise, Madan and I started Measured in anticipation of this very moment in time. More than five years ago, we bet on incrementality testing and experimentation as the way forward and began building independent measurement solutions that would withstand the upheaval being felt across the advertising industry today.
Where We Are Now
In the last year, Measured’s incrementality experiments were used to calculate the incrementality of $4.14 billion in advertising spend for more than 120 DTC brands. Results showed, on average, 40% of media investments are ineffective, and impact can vary vastly by channel, tactic, campaign, or ad set. It’s crucial for marketers to have reliable insights into incrementality at every level.
While ad platforms and legacy attribution vendors are just getting on board with incrementality, Measured has been helping brands grow through experimentation since 2017. We’re staying a step ahead so our clients never have to feel a step behind.
What This Means For Our Clients
Helping brand’s navigate the uncertainty of the past few years – and whatever is hiding around the corner ahead – is what Measured was built to do. Our tools and technology enable the experimentation that is now required of the modern day measurement stack.
We want to seize every opportunity to be the most trusted partner in measurement, and right now is the right time for growth funding from the right investors. Telescope has a reputation for excellence in thoughtful scale and a team with extensive experience in building high-performing software companies. They are the best partners to help us in our global mission.
The additional resources will allow us to focus on building the right product for today and maintain the high quality that brands have come to expect from Measured, while continuing to innovate for the future. Every dollar will be used strategically and deliberately, with our clients’ best interest leading the way.
Heart Full of Gratitude
This funding is a result of the incredible work being done by a phenomenal Measured team. Thank you to every one of you for going above and beyond everyday.
And to our clients… We only exist because of your trust in us and we are only as successful as the success of each brand we work with. Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your journey as much as you are of ours.
For more detail about today’s exciting news about Measured’s growth, funding, and future read today’s news announcement.
Still curious about what all the fuss is around incrementality measurement? Check out our new guide for an incrementality primer and steps to building your own experimentation practice.
At Measured, our stated mission has always been to help brands grow. We promise the brands we work with that we will always deliver best-in-class incrementality measurement solutions – even in a media environment that refuses to stand still. It was that unwavering commitment that ultimately drove us to raise $21M in funding from Telescope Partners.
Attribution has been an unsolved problem for decades and the recent stream of technology and privacy changes across the industry have pushed the ongoing issues to a breaking point. Measurement methods that require tracking users are not effective or accurate. The industry needs to move on to a future-proof measurement approach that everyone can trust, every time.
After spending most of our careers trying to force various multi-touch attribution models to deliver on an ambitious promise, Madan and I started Measured in anticipation of this very moment in time. More than five years ago, we bet on incrementality testing and experimentation as the way forward and began building independent measurement solutions that would withstand the upheaval being felt across the advertising industry today.
Where We Are Now
In the last year, Measured’s incrementality experiments were used to calculate the incrementality of $4.14 billion in advertising spend for more than 120 DTC brands. Results showed, on average, 40% of media investments are ineffective, and impact can vary vastly by channel, tactic, campaign, or ad set. It’s crucial for marketers to have reliable insights into incrementality at every level.
While ad platforms and legacy attribution vendors are just getting on board with incrementality, Measured has been helping brands grow through experimentation since 2017. We’re staying a step ahead so our clients never have to feel a step behind.
What This Means For Our Clients
Helping brand’s navigate the uncertainty of the past few years – and whatever is hiding around the corner ahead – is what Measured was built to do. Our tools and technology enable the experimentation that is now required of the modern day measurement stack.
We want to seize every opportunity to be the most trusted partner in measurement, and right now is the right time for growth funding from the right investors. Telescope has a reputation for excellence in thoughtful scale and a team with extensive experience in building high-performing software companies. They are the best partners to help us in our global mission.
The additional resources will allow us to focus on building the right product for today and maintain the high quality that brands have come to expect from Measured, while continuing to innovate for the future. Every dollar will be used strategically and deliberately, with our clients’ best interest leading the way.
Heart Full of Gratitude
This funding is a result of the incredible work being done by a phenomenal Measured team. Thank you to every one of you for going above and beyond everyday.
And to our clients… We only exist because of your trust in us and we are only as successful as the success of each brand we work with. Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your journey as much as you are of ours.
For more detail about today’s exciting news about Measured’s growth, funding, and future read today’s news announcement.
Still curious about what all the fuss is around incrementality measurement? Check out our new guide for an incrementality primer and steps to building your own experimentation practice.
Original Publisher
Ready to see how trusted measurement can help your brand make smarter media decisions?
Press 2022: Brands Go “All In” on Incrementality Measurement
In my final post for 2021, I shrugged off the common tradition of making annual predictions as we embark upon a new year. In an increasingly erratic advertising industry, nobody has the superpower of seeing a few weeks, let alone 12 months, into our murky future.
Instead of futile attempts to predict what’s in store, I suggested marketers prepare for anything by adopting a media measurement system that can withstand any unexpected plot twist. I doubled down on incrementality testing and independent experimentation as the future-proof approach to advertising measurement. Regardless of how dire the prognosis for cookies becomes, incrementality measurement, anchored on first-party data and cohort-based analytics, will continue to be effective.
This month, as yearly predictions filled my news feeds and lined my inbox, I realized that my call to incrementality measurement was in itself a prediction. Multi-touch attribution and the accuracy of platform conversion reporting are suffering greatly at the hands of privacy – landing incrementality testing and experimentation on many lists of advertising trends to watch in 2022.
- TechCrunch – 5 Growth Marketing Predictions for 2022
- Business of Fashion – The Marketing Metrics that Matter in 2022
- ExchangeWire – Predictions 2022: The Future of Measurement and Attribution
- AdExchanger – Get on Board – The Incrementality Train is (Finally) Here
- Gartner – Gartner Identifies Three Steps Marketers Must Take to Prepare for a Cookies-Less World
- Econsultancy: Data & analytics in 2022: What do the experts predict?
Both startups and long-established media organizations are eagerly unveiling their new incrementality measurement and experiment offerings. We welcome the increased interest in incrementality and the competition that comes along with it. Nothing becomes the “future of” anything unless a thriving community and industry build up around it.
In 2016, we made our own prediction that consumer data privacy concerns would eventually prevail over the user-tracking economy – so we started Measured to develop an effective and resilient approach to attribution. Brands like Johnny Was, Faherty, and Hint – who were some of our first clients more than four years ago – are still working with Measured (along with a portfolio of 90+ leading DTC brands) to make media decisions that grow their business.
The Measured team understands what burning questions keep marketers up at night and the many roads taken in an effort to answer them. In addition to decades of experience in advertising, attribution, data science, and ecommerce, we’ve been delivering incrementality measurement solutions longer than anyone else in the industry.
We’re committed to providing expert guidance and sharing everything we learn through platform and partner connections with our clients and the broader marketing community. As we innovate and adapt our products to answer the most pressing questions brands have about media, we are building content and providing updates about the latest developments impacting marketing performance:
- Our Incrementality Insights webinar series covers the most current topics in marketing measurement and always includes valuable tips and real use cases for addressing common challenges. Check out recent sessions on-demand to learn about measuring Facebook after iOS 14.5 or how Geo-testing can measure what platform attribution can’t.
- Watch this space our upcoming Incrementality Guide for DTC Marketers, packed with in-depth information about how to measure media incrementality and a step-by-step guide for getting started with experimentation.
- Have questions that are specific to your business or media program? Schedule time to chat with one of our experts. We love talking about this stuff!
Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter to stay in the know about incrementality and get the latest alerts about new content and events.
Want to see incrementality measurement in action? Schedule a demo today!
In 2016, we made our own prediction that consumer data privacy concerns would eventually prevail over the user-tracking economy - so we started Measured to develop an effective and resilient approach to attribution.
In my final post for 2021, I shrugged off the common tradition of making annual predictions as we embark upon a new year. In an increasingly erratic advertising industry, nobody has the superpower of seeing a few weeks, let alone 12 months, into our murky future.
Instead of futile attempts to predict what’s in store, I suggested marketers prepare for anything by adopting a media measurement system that can withstand any unexpected plot twist. I doubled down on incrementality testing and independent experimentation as the future-proof approach to advertising measurement. Regardless of how dire the prognosis for cookies becomes, incrementality measurement, anchored on first-party data and cohort-based analytics, will continue to be effective.
This month, as yearly predictions filled my news feeds and lined my inbox, I realized that my call to incrementality measurement was in itself a prediction. Multi-touch attribution and the accuracy of platform conversion reporting are suffering greatly at the hands of privacy – landing incrementality testing and experimentation on many lists of advertising trends to watch in 2022.
- TechCrunch – 5 Growth Marketing Predictions for 2022
- Business of Fashion – The Marketing Metrics that Matter in 2022
- ExchangeWire – Predictions 2022: The Future of Measurement and Attribution
- AdExchanger – Get on Board – The Incrementality Train is (Finally) Here
- Gartner – Gartner Identifies Three Steps Marketers Must Take to Prepare for a Cookies-Less World
- Econsultancy: Data & analytics in 2022: What do the experts predict?
Both startups and long-established media organizations are eagerly unveiling their new incrementality measurement and experiment offerings. We welcome the increased interest in incrementality and the competition that comes along with it. Nothing becomes the “future of” anything unless a thriving community and industry build up around it.
In 2016, we made our own prediction that consumer data privacy concerns would eventually prevail over the user-tracking economy – so we started Measured to develop an effective and resilient approach to attribution. Brands like Johnny Was, Faherty, and Hint – who were some of our first clients more than four years ago – are still working with Measured (along with a portfolio of 90+ leading DTC brands) to make media decisions that grow their business.
The Measured team understands what burning questions keep marketers up at night and the many roads taken in an effort to answer them. In addition to decades of experience in advertising, attribution, data science, and ecommerce, we’ve been delivering incrementality measurement solutions longer than anyone else in the industry.
We’re committed to providing expert guidance and sharing everything we learn through platform and partner connections with our clients and the broader marketing community. As we innovate and adapt our products to answer the most pressing questions brands have about media, we are building content and providing updates about the latest developments impacting marketing performance:
- Our Incrementality Insights webinar series covers the most current topics in marketing measurement and always includes valuable tips and real use cases for addressing common challenges. Check out recent sessions on-demand to learn about measuring Facebook after iOS 14.5 or how Geo-testing can measure what platform attribution can’t.
- Watch this space our upcoming Incrementality Guide for DTC Marketers, packed with in-depth information about how to measure media incrementality and a step-by-step guide for getting started with experimentation.
- Have questions that are specific to your business or media program? Schedule time to chat with one of our experts. We love talking about this stuff!
Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter to stay in the know about incrementality and get the latest alerts about new content and events.
Want to see incrementality measurement in action? Schedule a demo today!
Original Publisher
In 2016, we made our own prediction that consumer data privacy concerns would eventually prevail over the user-tracking economy - so we started Measured to develop an effective and resilient approach to attribution.
Ready to see how trusted measurement can help your brand make smarter media decisions?
Press Future-Proof Advertising Measurement in 2022 and Beyond
Every year in December, they start to show up on news sites and social feeds: posts reviewing the year that has passed and looking forward at what’s to come. The “top 10 things to expect in 2022” listicles may be well-intentioned and even entertaining, but most are just a shot in the dark at predicting what will actually unfold in the year ahead.
If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected and prepare to quickly adapt when unplanned changes surface. Nowhere is this more true than advertising. The media industry, long plagued by a lack of transparency and wavering trust between all parties involved, has experienced a sweeping upheaval with dramatic repercussions.
For years, marketers have been pressured to trust agencies and platforms reporting on their own performance and accept results calculated by “black box” attribution vendors. More recently, privacy-driven policy changes have wreaked havoc on platform reporting and attribution, compromising accuracy to a point that marketers can no longer reluctantly accept.
Apple’s privacy measures sank platform-reported conversions and stock prices alike. It’s convenient and easy to point the finger at Apple for the state of panic many marketers currently find themselves in, but the demise of user-level tracking and third-party data access was always in the cards. Apple just knocked over the first domino.
It may be tempting to move ad budgets away from Google, Facebook, and Snap to “safer” channels, but the same issues are impeding the ability to track and measure advertising for every online platform. The old way is broken. The only way forward is a system of measurement that is independent of the platforms, doesn’t fall apart as ID tracking crumbles, and enables marketers to easily adapt to whatever the future holds.
Independent incrementality experiments, such as geo-matched market testing or first-party audience split testing, can connect advertising tactics to business metrics in a statistically sound way that removes platform reporting bias. Mapping media’s influence to data from the business transaction system of record provides advertisers with a clean read on the true incremental contribution of media at the channel, campaign, or ad set level – no tracking required.
This has been our focus at Measured since day one. We aren’t trying to adapt flawed measurement methods of the past and force-fit them into what marketers require today. We were on the same attribution roller coaster as everyone else for decades – and we decided it was time to get off. We built our business and our products from the ground up in anticipation of what is happening right now.
Measured has dedicated years of research and development to creating a framework of transparency and trust that allows marketers to stop compromising on measurement and start using it to drive business. That’s what marketers truly need in 2022 and beyond. We don’t have a crystal ball to see into the future, but we do know that the old way of doing things has finally collapsed under its own weight.
So, no top ten predictions here. I leave you instead with warm wishes for a lovely holiday season and a happy, healthy new year. I’m confident that we will continue to see unprecedented change in the advertising industry (and beyond), and equally sure that independent incrementality measurement is the right way to future-proof your operations.
With transparent measurement delivered by a neutral party, marketers can protect themselves from the whims of an unpredictable environment and regain the confidence to build towards a great year ahead.
Measured has dedicated years of research and development to creating a framework of transparency and trust that allows marketers to stop compromising on measurement and start using it to drive business.
Every year in December, they start to show up on news sites and social feeds: posts reviewing the year that has passed and looking forward at what’s to come. The “top 10 things to expect in 2022” listicles may be well-intentioned and even entertaining, but most are just a shot in the dark at predicting what will actually unfold in the year ahead.
If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected and prepare to quickly adapt when unplanned changes surface. Nowhere is this more true than advertising. The media industry, long plagued by a lack of transparency and wavering trust between all parties involved, has experienced a sweeping upheaval with dramatic repercussions.
For years, marketers have been pressured to trust agencies and platforms reporting on their own performance and accept results calculated by “black box” attribution vendors. More recently, privacy-driven policy changes have wreaked havoc on platform reporting and attribution, compromising accuracy to a point that marketers can no longer reluctantly accept.
Apple’s privacy measures sank platform-reported conversions and stock prices alike. It’s convenient and easy to point the finger at Apple for the state of panic many marketers currently find themselves in, but the demise of user-level tracking and third-party data access was always in the cards. Apple just knocked over the first domino.
It may be tempting to move ad budgets away from Google, Facebook, and Snap to “safer” channels, but the same issues are impeding the ability to track and measure advertising for every online platform. The old way is broken. The only way forward is a system of measurement that is independent of the platforms, doesn’t fall apart as ID tracking crumbles, and enables marketers to easily adapt to whatever the future holds.
Independent incrementality experiments, such as geo-matched market testing or first-party audience split testing, can connect advertising tactics to business metrics in a statistically sound way that removes platform reporting bias. Mapping media’s influence to data from the business transaction system of record provides advertisers with a clean read on the true incremental contribution of media at the channel, campaign, or ad set level – no tracking required.
This has been our focus at Measured since day one. We aren’t trying to adapt flawed measurement methods of the past and force-fit them into what marketers require today. We were on the same attribution roller coaster as everyone else for decades – and we decided it was time to get off. We built our business and our products from the ground up in anticipation of what is happening right now.
Measured has dedicated years of research and development to creating a framework of transparency and trust that allows marketers to stop compromising on measurement and start using it to drive business. That’s what marketers truly need in 2022 and beyond. We don’t have a crystal ball to see into the future, but we do know that the old way of doing things has finally collapsed under its own weight.
So, no top ten predictions here. I leave you instead with warm wishes for a lovely holiday season and a happy, healthy new year. I’m confident that we will continue to see unprecedented change in the advertising industry (and beyond), and equally sure that independent incrementality measurement is the right way to future-proof your operations.
With transparent measurement delivered by a neutral party, marketers can protect themselves from the whims of an unpredictable environment and regain the confidence to build towards a great year ahead.
Original Publisher
Measured has dedicated years of research and development to creating a framework of transparency and trust that allows marketers to stop compromising on measurement and start using it to drive business.
Ready to see how trusted measurement can help your brand make smarter media decisions?
Press Is There Marketing Gold Hiding In Your Customer House File?
DTC brands, you are on the home stretch! Black Friday and Cyber Week are behind you and there are just a handful of days until you can enjoy the holidays and breathe a sigh of… frustration as the return season begins?
It’s been a rollercoaster couple of years for DTC marketers. Anticipated busy seasons and fickle consumer shopping behaviors aside, the unpredictable market-shifting events of the past 24 months have delivered blow after destabilizing blow to marketers attempting to deliver sustained growth for their brands.
First-party data has become the darling of marketing strategy discussion, especially as the ongoing stream of policy changes, kicked off by the introduction of Apple’s ATT, are increasingly restricting access to third-party data and ID tracking. One notion that has sparked no debate across the industry is that brands need to make collection and activation of first-party data a top priority in this new environment.
As we talk daily to marketers and executives at DTC brands, we’ve learned that many of you are unaware of the gold mine of valuable data that already exists within your customer house files. We’re going to spend the next few months showing you how to bring those insights and opportunities to light.
While the holiday shopping season is a chaotic time for DTC marketers (to put it mildly), it’s also the time when contact lists grow fat with new data as people shop around for everyone on their lists. Now is the time to build a strategy to activate all your first-party data, old and new, to deliver growth opportunities all year long in 2022.
We recently hosted another incrementality Insights session to discuss how DTC brands can use data from customer house files to optimize contact strategies and reveal new opportunities for revenue growth.
During the webinar we explored:
- How to uncover new opportunities for growth from your house file.
- How to decide which customers are worth retargeting.
- How marketers use CRM and CDPs (and how they’re different).
- Several examples of how DTC brands are using customer reporting today.
- How to align your total media budget to achieve customer retention and acquisition targets under different financial margin/growth scenarios.
Access the Incrementality Insights video here
The team at Measured has been committed to sharing any guidance we can to help brands navigate ongoing turbulence across the media industry. Whatever the future holds, we won’t stop being a source of valuable insight and expert advice to ensure marketers can make confident decisions about the future.
Did you miss out on this or previous Incrementality Insights sessions covering topics like solving Facebook measurement, the ongoing impact of Apple iOS 14.5+, or how to uncover incrementality using geo matched-market experiments?
Many marketers are unaware of the gold mine of valuable data and growth opportunities that already exist within their customer house files.
DTC brands, you are on the home stretch! Black Friday and Cyber Week are behind you and there are just a handful of days until you can enjoy the holidays and breathe a sigh of… frustration as the return season begins?
It’s been a rollercoaster couple of years for DTC marketers. Anticipated busy seasons and fickle consumer shopping behaviors aside, the unpredictable market-shifting events of the past 24 months have delivered blow after destabilizing blow to marketers attempting to deliver sustained growth for their brands.
First-party data has become the darling of marketing strategy discussion, especially as the ongoing stream of policy changes, kicked off by the introduction of Apple’s ATT, are increasingly restricting access to third-party data and ID tracking. One notion that has sparked no debate across the industry is that brands need to make collection and activation of first-party data a top priority in this new environment.
As we talk daily to marketers and executives at DTC brands, we’ve learned that many of you are unaware of the gold mine of valuable data that already exists within your customer house files. We’re going to spend the next few months showing you how to bring those insights and opportunities to light.
While the holiday shopping season is a chaotic time for DTC marketers (to put it mildly), it’s also the time when contact lists grow fat with new data as people shop around for everyone on their lists. Now is the time to build a strategy to activate all your first-party data, old and new, to deliver growth opportunities all year long in 2022.
We recently hosted another incrementality Insights session to discuss how DTC brands can use data from customer house files to optimize contact strategies and reveal new opportunities for revenue growth.
During the webinar we explored:
- How to uncover new opportunities for growth from your house file.
- How to decide which customers are worth retargeting.
- How marketers use CRM and CDPs (and how they’re different).
- Several examples of how DTC brands are using customer reporting today.
- How to align your total media budget to achieve customer retention and acquisition targets under different financial margin/growth scenarios.
Access the Incrementality Insights video here
The team at Measured has been committed to sharing any guidance we can to help brands navigate ongoing turbulence across the media industry. Whatever the future holds, we won’t stop being a source of valuable insight and expert advice to ensure marketers can make confident decisions about the future.
Did you miss out on this or previous Incrementality Insights sessions covering topics like solving Facebook measurement, the ongoing impact of Apple iOS 14.5+, or how to uncover incrementality using geo matched-market experiments?
Original Publisher
Many marketers are unaware of the gold mine of valuable data and growth opportunities that already exist within their customer house files.
Ready to see how trusted measurement can help your brand make smarter media decisions?
Press Can You Trust the Results Your Advertising Platforms are Reporting?
For the past few years, an endless stream of policy updates from tech giants like Apple and Google have held DTC marketers in an advertising undertow. Just as they gain a semblance of stability, having adapted their strategies to the latest requirements, another headline hits and pulls them back into a sea of chaos.
At Measured, we are committed to providing brands with ongoing insights that can always be trusted. Our experts are continuously analyzing the potential impact of inevitable industry changes on the ability of advertisers to measure the performance of their ad campaigns.
Based on data from across our portfolio of DTC brands, running thousands of media incrementality experiments on multiple channels, there is only one viable option to escape the breaking waves for good. Marketers need a reliable system of measurement, based on their own source of truth transaction data, that is independent of platform bias and not susceptible to damage from rapidly degrading identity resolution and user tracking capabilities.
We’ve come full circle: why are we talking about last-click again?
If we’re being honest (and that’s just who we are), relying solely on attribution and conversion lift reports delivered by the platforms you are paying for advertising was never a comfortable approach for anyone. It’s understandable to be concerned that platforms reporting on their own performance might inflate their results. By relying on last-click attribution, platforms have lived up to that skepticism. When every platform claims 100% of the credit for every conversion it was in the path of, the numbers will not add up.
Multi-touch attribution (MTA) promised to reconcile conflicting last-click performance reports with user click-paths, built by following individuals around the internet and assigning a percentage of credit for each touchpoint on the way to a conversion. It sounded like a data-driven utopia for marketers, but ended up being complex, cumbersome, expensive, and really not all that effective.
We’ve been shouting about this at Measured for years; With more and more governments, companies, and platforms putting the kibosh on user-level tracking, MTA is dead.
Marketers are now challenged with reverting back to platform reporting, unifying the data they can collect from all available disparate sources, and extrapolating actionable insights. But who should they trust when sales transactions, site-side analytics, and the platforms themselves inevitably report wildly different results?
Platform reporting will lead you down a dangerous path
The same issues that moved us away from last-click attribution in the first place still exist, but today’s environment is even more precarious for platforms trying to prove their worth to data-hungry advertisers. Apple’s new privacy policies, Google’s decision to eventually kill browser cookies, and all the privacy dominoes falling in the wake of these titans are slashing visibility for walled gardens like Facebook and causing a breakdown in their ability to provide usable attribution and lift reports to advertisers.
Facebook recently indicated that the platform’s ad measurement and reporting systems are suffering accuracy issues related to Apple’s iOS updates. Facebook believes that “real-world conversions, like sales and app installs, are higher than what is being reported for many advertisers.”
The incrementality experiments we’ve been running prove that Facebook’s theory is correct. While Facebook’s attribution reporting has gone down significantly since the rollout of iOS 14.5, by reconciling experiment results with source-of-truth transaction data from the brand, Measured has revealed that the incremental contribution of their Facebook campaigns has remained consistent.
Performance isn’t suffering. Reporting is.
This is not an isolated incident
While Apple was the most recent to implement (and enforce) new policies and Facebook, as the second-largest online advertising platform in the world, has received the most attention about collateral damage for advertisers, this is the new reality for all advertisers – on all platforms.
As an example, we just reviewed the results of OTT incrementality experiments for a large fashion brand advertising on the Roku platform. The results indicated that Roku was significantly underreporting the performance of their ads and the value they contributed to the brand’s business. If the brand had relied on the reports from Roku alone, they may have made decisions about very large advertising investments based on false information.
The variety and pace of change happening in this space are having some level of impact on measurement and reporting for every advertising platform that exists. There is no future where data privacy policies become less restricted. Marketers need to prepare now.
To avoid the repercussions of wasting money and failing to meet KPIs, marketers need an independent system of measurement, tied to their own business transaction data (which the platforms do not have) to rescue them from the undertow and guide them towards smart investment decisions.
Want to learn about how brands are working with Measured to reveal the incrementality of Facebook ads?
Watch the video
To avoid the repercussions of wasting money and failing to meet KPIs, marketers need an independent system of measurement, tied to their own business transaction data - which the platforms do not have.
For the past few years, an endless stream of policy updates from tech giants like Apple and Google have held DTC marketers in an advertising undertow. Just as they gain a semblance of stability, having adapted their strategies to the latest requirements, another headline hits and pulls them back into a sea of chaos.
At Measured, we are committed to providing brands with ongoing insights that can always be trusted. Our experts are continuously analyzing the potential impact of inevitable industry changes on the ability of advertisers to measure the performance of their ad campaigns.
Based on data from across our portfolio of DTC brands, running thousands of media incrementality experiments on multiple channels, there is only one viable option to escape the breaking waves for good. Marketers need a reliable system of measurement, based on their own source of truth transaction data, that is independent of platform bias and not susceptible to damage from rapidly degrading identity resolution and user tracking capabilities.
We’ve come full circle: why are we talking about last-click again?
If we’re being honest (and that’s just who we are), relying solely on attribution and conversion lift reports delivered by the platforms you are paying for advertising was never a comfortable approach for anyone. It’s understandable to be concerned that platforms reporting on their own performance might inflate their results. By relying on last-click attribution, platforms have lived up to that skepticism. When every platform claims 100% of the credit for every conversion it was in the path of, the numbers will not add up.
Multi-touch attribution (MTA) promised to reconcile conflicting last-click performance reports with user click-paths, built by following individuals around the internet and assigning a percentage of credit for each touchpoint on the way to a conversion. It sounded like a data-driven utopia for marketers, but ended up being complex, cumbersome, expensive, and really not all that effective.
We’ve been shouting about this at Measured for years; With more and more governments, companies, and platforms putting the kibosh on user-level tracking, MTA is dead.
Marketers are now challenged with reverting back to platform reporting, unifying the data they can collect from all available disparate sources, and extrapolating actionable insights. But who should they trust when sales transactions, site-side analytics, and the platforms themselves inevitably report wildly different results?
Platform reporting will lead you down a dangerous path
The same issues that moved us away from last-click attribution in the first place still exist, but today’s environment is even more precarious for platforms trying to prove their worth to data-hungry advertisers. Apple’s new privacy policies, Google’s decision to eventually kill browser cookies, and all the privacy dominoes falling in the wake of these titans are slashing visibility for walled gardens like Facebook and causing a breakdown in their ability to provide usable attribution and lift reports to advertisers.
Facebook recently indicated that the platform’s ad measurement and reporting systems are suffering accuracy issues related to Apple’s iOS updates. Facebook believes that “real-world conversions, like sales and app installs, are higher than what is being reported for many advertisers.”
The incrementality experiments we’ve been running prove that Facebook’s theory is correct. While Facebook’s attribution reporting has gone down significantly since the rollout of iOS 14.5, by reconciling experiment results with source-of-truth transaction data from the brand, Measured has revealed that the incremental contribution of their Facebook campaigns has remained consistent.
Performance isn’t suffering. Reporting is.
This is not an isolated incident
While Apple was the most recent to implement (and enforce) new policies and Facebook, as the second-largest online advertising platform in the world, has received the most attention about collateral damage for advertisers, this is the new reality for all advertisers – on all platforms.
As an example, we just reviewed the results of OTT incrementality experiments for a large fashion brand advertising on the Roku platform. The results indicated that Roku was significantly underreporting the performance of their ads and the value they contributed to the brand’s business. If the brand had relied on the reports from Roku alone, they may have made decisions about very large advertising investments based on false information.
The variety and pace of change happening in this space are having some level of impact on measurement and reporting for every advertising platform that exists. There is no future where data privacy policies become less restricted. Marketers need to prepare now.
To avoid the repercussions of wasting money and failing to meet KPIs, marketers need an independent system of measurement, tied to their own business transaction data (which the platforms do not have) to rescue them from the undertow and guide them towards smart investment decisions.
Want to learn about how brands are working with Measured to reveal the incrementality of Facebook ads?
Watch the video
Original Publisher
To avoid the repercussions of wasting money and failing to meet KPIs, marketers need an independent system of measurement, tied to their own business transaction data - which the platforms do not have.
Ready to see how trusted measurement can help your brand make smarter media decisions?