At a Glance

  • According to a new report from Ebiquity and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), marketers' significant investments in measurement have not yet delivered expected returns, particularly in budget decisions.
  • Only 15% of surveyed leaders said marketing effectiveness outputs are a primary factor in budget decisions. However, 75% of respondents believe that within the next three years, more than half of budget allocations will be guided by measurement-driven insights.
  • No surveyed marketers claimed to have best-in-class measurement capabilities; investment growth in channels such as retail media, connected TV, influencer marketing, and AI-driven search has outpaced the development of the measurement infrastructure used to evaluate performance in these areas.

Key Insights

The new report from WFA and Ebiquity indicates that although marketers have access to more measurement and data tools than ever before, they lack the organizational discipline and responsiveness needed to fully leverage these solutions. This finding echoes industry research—CMOs are being askedto stretch relatively stagnant budgets furtherwhile leveragingtechnologies such as AIto improve efficiency, but these technologies are costly and complex to implement.

Among the organizations surveyed by Ebiquity and WFA, eight in ten use marketing mix modeling and brand lift studies for paid media placements, but a much smaller share say insights from these marketing effectiveness methods influence budget allocation. Additionally, 54% of marketers say insights often arrive too late to act on due to compressed decision cycles. A growing number of marketers are looking to automation to keep pace, but 67% believe their maturity in this area remains low.

Part of the challenge is amplified by a lack of consensus between marketing departments and chief financial officers (CFOs) on the definition of "marketing effectiveness." Only 14% of companies say marketers and CFOs agree on the definition of effectiveness. WFA and Ebiquity note that marketers often prioritize vanity metrics over metrics that reflect true business impact.

Furthermore, 46% of marketing organizations remain at the lowest maturity level in integrating data sources into a unified view. Knowledge gaps are evident elsewhere—only 4% of marketers say they have high confidence in distinguishing short-term sales impact from long-term brand building.

Ebiquity, an independent marketing effectiveness consultancy, completed this report in partnership with WFA, an industry association serving multinational marketers. The survey was conducted in the spring, covering 71 senior leaders across 10 industries globally, with in-depth interviews with 27 of them. Participants included companies such as PepsiCo, Ford, Mondelēz International, and Mars Wrigley.

"The tools are in place, the discipline is established, and the coverage is there. The challenge marketers still face is how to turn all this measurement into decisions that impact the business," said Sorin Patilinet, PepsiCo's global head of marketing effectiveness and growth strategy innovation, in a statement accompanying the report.

The gap between the resources marketers invest in measurement and their ability to translate those investments into action may create further obstacles in the future—especially as focus shifts to new channels like influencer marketing and AI search, where measurement tools are relatively immature. Nevertheless, Tom Ashby, WFA's global head of media services, noted that in measurement, raw technical maturity may be less important than establishing the right operating systems, governance mechanisms, and business alignment.

"As scrutiny of marketing investment intensifies and new channels emerge, the ability to turn evidence into action may become one of the defining competitive advantages of the modern marketing organization," Ashby said in the statement.