DTC Brands Trust Unbiased Experiments and Source-of-Truth Reporting to Inform Facebook Ad Investments

As advertising platforms grapple with the measurement fallout of increasing restrictions on data and tracking, Measured has launched the industry’s first end-to-end incrementality measurement and reporting solution for Facebook in a post-iOS 14.5 world.

Facebook recently indicated that the platform’s measurement and reporting systems are suffering accuracy issues related to updates in recent versions of Apple’s iOS. Facebook believes that “real world conversions, like sales and app installs, are higher than what is being reported for many advertisers.”

Experiments from Measured provide DTC brands like Birdies, Fabletics, Lulus, and Stance with reliable ongoing insights into Facebook incrementality at channel, campaign and ad set levels. By measuring the true incremental contribution of Facebook media, anchored on source-of-truth transaction data provided by the brand, marketers can make informed decisions about budget allocation – even amid rising concerns about the reliability of platform self-reporting.

“Privacy-driven changes across the industry are causing widespread reporting headaches for platforms and forcing brands to adapt how they track and measure,” said Madan Bharadwaj, CTO and cofounder of Measured. “We built Measured in anticipation of this moment. We continuously refine our experiment designs and adapt to inevitable changes by platforms to ensure brands can always trust insights they get from us.”

Apple’s tracking policies pressured Facebook to make multi-faceted changes to attribution capabilities it offers advertisers, including a significant scale-back in conversion lift-testing and the elimination of 28-day click-through and view-through attribution windows. The decrease in trackable data has caused a notable drop in attribution reporting from the platform and the shorter look-back periods make it exponentially more difficult to run statistically significant split-audience test and control experiments.

In the wake of these iOS-related implications, Measured developed a new suite of experiment designs and actionable reporting tools that identify the causality between Facebook investments and actual business transactions reported by the brand, empowering marketers to make confident decisions about advertising on the platform.

Audience split experiments – Measured’s proprietary methodology utilizes the Facebook audience split API to divide target audiences into test and control cohorts and apply systematic lift studies to get program-level and granular ad set-level incrementality measurements.

Geo-matched market experiments – Using advanced matched-market data science, Measured identifies statistically significant sibling markets (geos), at the state, DMA or zip code level, that are similar but cheaper to test in than larger markets. Because geo experiments are based on source-of-truth transaction data from the business (e.g. ecommerce platform) and run completely independent of platform reporting, geo-testing is the only system of measurement that isn’t affected by platform and policy changes.

Scale testing experiments – To test for scale, Measured splits target audiences into three cohorts – test, control, and scale. The ad sets used for the test group are cloned and served to the scale group, but at 2x-3x-4x the spend, to measure the point of audience saturation.

“Although Hammitt only started with Measured less than a year ago, their scientific method is just what is needed to scale profitably – in spite of privacy changes, which I support,” said Tony Drockton, Founder of Hammitt, an emerging leader in the luxury handbag market. “Great brands will prosper in these times with a clear vision, great partners like Measured, and by approaching digital media as a permission-based win-win between their customers and the brands they love.”

For more information on Facebook measurement watch the recent webinar: https://beta.measured.com/webinar/measured-incrementality-insights-solving-facebook-measurement

To learn more about incrementality experiments from Measured visit: https://beta.measured.com/products/measured-mexperiment-incrementality-testing-measurement

Incrementality Measurement and Source of Truth Reporting Inform Cross-Channel Media Investment Decisions

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – April 27, 2021 – As increasing data and online tracking restrictions put pressure on marketers to find alternative ways to measure and optimize advertising performance, Measured, a leading provider of incrementality measurement solutions, today revealed the Measured Intelligence SuiteTM for smart media investment decisions.

By 2016, attribution experts had failed for more than a decade to deliver on the lofty promises of multi-touch attribution (MTA) and measurement beyond last click. Measured was founded by advertising industry veterans to develop a new measurement approach, based on incrementality testing and experimentation, that remained transparent and independent from platform bias and didn’t require third-party data or user-level tracking to be effective.  

“When we started Measured, data privacy was a growing global concern and we saw the writing on the wall. The challenges to MTA would become insurmountable with increasing restrictions on data use – so we started building for the reality we are facing today,” said Trevor Testwuide, CEO and cofounder of Measured. “The recent policy updates from tech companies like Google, Apple and Facebook are just the latest in a series of privacy-driven changes that will require brands to adapt how they track and measure. We built our company in anticipation of this moment. It’s literally why we exist.” 

Rooted in innovative experimental design, Measured’s approach uses compliant first-party reporting and direct integrations into hundreds of sources to reveal the true incremental contribution of media to sales. Growing brands like ButcherBox, Drizly, Fabletics, and Faherty Brand have used Measured solutions to inform cross-channel investment decisions and scale media for growth.

“Performance reports from different platforms provide conflicting results that don’t add up. We brought in Measured as an unbiased solution to reveal the true incremental contribution of each media channel and tactic – so we could allocate investments to maximize growth,” said Scott Braun, CMO at Drizly, North America’s largest ecommerce alcohol marketplace. “When the global pandemic hit, Measured helped us navigate the drastic shifts in consumer lifestyles and behavior. Now, as new regulations and privacy policies force brands to reevaluate how they track and measure, we’re leaning on Measured’s expertise to help us continually understand the incremental value of the dollars we spend.” 

Measured Intelligence SuiteTM is a comprehensive set of SaaS-delivered solutions that provide brands with ongoing, actionable cross-channel media insights and a privacy-compliant marketing data warehouse (MDW). 

mMDWTM is a configurable data operating platform, purpose-built for marketing analytics that unifies, stores, and operationalizes data from across the business.

• Ingests data from 100+ API integrations and includes support for non-API vendors.
• Collects and anonymizes consent data with user-level data in a data clean room provided for every client.
• Guarantees data quality and consistency with a 40-point QA check process and automated backup and recovery.
• Includes built-in compliance support for the latest privacy regulations. 

mExperimentTM executes scientifically proven experiments, meticulously designed for the unique requirements, operations, and data sets of each platform. 

• Identifies waste and informs scale opportunities across all addressable and non-addressable channels. 
• Provides quick, actionable insights starting with incrementality analysis of historical data. 
• Conducts ongoing in-market experiments using audience split, geo-matched market and scale testing.
• Continuously updates experiment designs to adapt to any new policies or technology changes made by platforms.

mDecisionsTM provides marketers, executives and data professionals a reliable source of truth through customized dashboards and reports. 

• Reveals latest performance data in comprehensive cross-channel views down to granular results at tactic, audience, and adset levels. 
• Provides optimization reports with recommended actions based on stated growth objectives.
• Identifies diminishing return curves and marginal metrics for saturation, indicating where to grow and how far to scale.

“Measured provides us and our portfolio companies with a trusted common language for finance and marketing to agree on how to best invest in paid media,” said Jay Sung, Operating Partner and CMO at Brentwood Associates who helps portfolio companies like Boston Proper,  J. McLaughlin, Really Good Stuff and Soft Surroundings optimize their marketing programs. During a very challenging time in retail, Measured has proven to be an invaluable partner, by identifying potential efficiency gains and opportunities for growth then recommending the steps to capitalize on them.”  

During the past 12 months, Measured increased revenue by 250% and added new engagements with popular brands including Dermalogica, GrubHub, Afterpay and Parachute – a strong indication that incrementality measurement and a compliant option for managing and using marketing data are in high demand. Measured was also recently named Best Measurement or Analytics Capability by AdExchanger and Best Attribution Provider by Digiday in their 2020 awards programs. 

To learn more about incrementality measurement and the Measured Intelligence Suite, visit the new Measured website at Measured.com.  

Industry Veterans from Visual IQ, Conversion Logic and MarketShare Team Up
To Build Next Generation Cross-Channel Marketing Measurement

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – May 14, 2019 – After two years of refining its technology, building its team and delivering insights for early customers, Measured has officially exited stealth to launch its cross-channel incrementality measurement and decisioning platform.

“The promise of marketing measurement beyond last-click has failed to deliver for marketers. Multi-touch attribution has been plagued by severe data reconciliation issues, walled garden blind spots, the collapse of third-party tracking, challenges of identity and GDPR, and painful on-boarding,” said Trevor Testwuide, co-founder and CEO at Measured. “Media mix modeling is not granular enough for tactical decision-making and too expensive for mid-market brands. Cross-channel marketing measurement has failed marketers.”

Measured has developed a new approach anchored on innovative experimental design to inform cross-channel media investment decisions.

Fresh Approach 

Measured solves for the difficult challenges of operationalizing steady-state test-and-control experimentation at scale across channels.

“We went back to the drawing board to innovate cross-channel measurement for the realities of today’s marketers,” said Madan Bharadwaj, co-founder and CTO at Measured. “We are excited to bring to market a new transparent, practical and scalable approach to marketing measurement.”

Measured empowers its customers to focus on the high-value media mix decisions that drive customer acquisition based on incremental metrics. The Measured platform handles the complex heavy lifting of cross-channel data management and continuous data quality validation to inform accurate and trusted measurement.

“We take the pain out of sophisticated cross-channel media incrementality testing,” Testwuide said.

The world’s most successful brands, such as Amazon, Google and Facebook, have adopted a company-wide experimentation approach for testing ideas and making decisions. Similarly, Measured conducts media-buying experiments by segmenting the advertiser’s unique prospecting, remarketing and house file audiences into test and control groups.

“Our experimentation technology that executes holdouts for prospecting audiences affordably is truly a breakthrough,” Bharadwaj said. “The results of each experiment empower marketers to make investment decisions informed by actual audience-level incremental performance metrics.”

Early Success

Measured has already contributed to the success of multiple high-growth brands by delivering ongoing cross-channel media investment insights to companies like FabFitFun, Johnny Was, Hint, AB InBev, J.Jill, AARP and Soft Surroundings.

Johnny Was, a fast growing high-fashion retailer and early customer, has more than doubled its direct-to-consumer business within the first two years of working with Measured.

“Measured is a critical partner enabling us to tune in to media’s contribution to our growth,” said Rob Trauber, CEO of Johnny Was. “We now have a laser focus on the incremental contribution of paid media, providing us the data to make smarter investment decisions.”

“We are seeing customers use our product to right-size retargeting budgets, scale customer acquisition on Facebook and Catalog, and really build out a practice around cross-channel investment decisioning,” Testwuide said.

Proven Leaders

Measured’s leadership has a proven track record in cross-channel marketing measurement and attribution. Testwuide was previously co-founder and CEO of Conversion Logic, a leader in multi-touch attribution. Prior to that, he was an early leader at Visual IQ (acquired by Nielson in 2017).

Bharadwaj, also a Visual IQ alum, is a leading expert in advanced marketing measurement systems with a decade of experience applying big data and machine learning technologies.

COO Nick Stoltz was most recently a senior vice president at MarketShare, a Neustar Solution, and has spent the last 10 years working with brands across multiple industries to build analytics programs that drive incremental revenue and profit.

About Measured
Measured helps inform the incrementality of paid media for marketers to drive cross-channel investment decisions. Its approach is rooted in innovative, always-on A/B experimentation, proven to be the most effective and accurate methodology for determining incremental contribution. Incrementality drives Measured’s cross-channel attribution and decisioning platform. Measured is powered by a privacy-compliant and quality-controlled marketing data platform provided as a service. Measured is based in Santa Monica and maintains offices in Boston, Toronto and India. For more information, visit www.measured.com.