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Many Brands Aren’t Confident About Their Measurement Capabilities—Dentsu Shares How to Change That

Today, advertisers are increasingly leaning toward a variety of measurement solutions to enable metrics-driven media investments across channels. With a growing number of touchpoints in the complex customer journey, conducting measurement to understand marketing success and prove ROI has become table stakes. According to Winterberry Group and IAB, nearly 50% of those surveyed believed measurement and attribution would be a top priority in 2021.

Still, managing a growing portfolio of measurement solutions with different objectives, use cases, and methodologies can be overwhelming and confusing. The 2021 Nielsen Annual Marketing Report revealed that brands of all sizes across industries have very little confidence in their existing measurement capabilities. So, how do brands gain confidence and maximize the value of their measurement portfolio?

We sat down with TS Kelly, EVP of media effectiveness at dentsu, to discuss. TS is an industry veteran of media analytics and measurement with deep experience across media agencies and research vendors. As you can imagine, a huge part of his job involves strategizing and thinking about how to improve media performance.

Maggie Zhang: What are the biggest challenges brands face in managing their measurement portfolio?

TS Kelly: Three things are top of mind: 1) Consistency, in finding results and comparing performance between measurement vendors; 2) transparency, or the lack thereof, for brands to understand insights behind the scenes of their campaigns; and 3) linkage to different data sets. We are seeing siloed and disjointed insights between vendors. It’s a challenge to connect the dots and link insights from funnel stages to conversion.

What is the ideal state of a measurement portfolio that you and your advertisers are striving to achieve?

The ideal state is to gain a holistic understanding of consumer behavior and media performance. At dentsu, we look to unify and consolidate first-party and third-party insights as much as possible. We like to establish a set language of performance, or a framework, with our clients to gain the connective tissues to measure.

Let’s talk about the “How.” What are the best practices you recommend to effectively generate insights and learnings?

I definitely have a few. First, always start with advertisers’ challenges, working backwards like an inverted pyramid. Likewise, you need to have a clear understanding of the current landscape—where does the brand stand and where is it headed, assessing the comfort level of each brand and preparing them for the unknown.

Next, when it comes to measurement and insights, adhere to our north stars of consistency and transparency in tool selection and process creation, ensure the QA protocols and manage the data pipeline. Then, integrate measurement-based insights with the entire creative, media planning and activation process to ensure actionability of insights and learnings.

Above all, allow room to make mistakes and improve them. Encourage creativity and experimentation, allow for client failure and client risks, and anticipate the need around the corner.

What are the best practices to activate measurement insights to improve media effectiveness?

First and foremost, increase the adoption of your measurement tools. The more they’re used, the more successful they’ll be. Next, I highly encourage creating a cross-functional intake process with advertisers, not only including analytics in the room, but also planning and activation representatives.

For leaders, stay close to the planning process—get in the planning meetings and participate in the measurement discussion upstream. Lastly, create the buy-in process and internal mechanism to facilitate cross-functional (buying and planning) inputs and accountability. Tackling the challenge of measurement together will produce better results.

Looking ahead, the measurement landscape will continue to be challenging and exciting. An organized and unified measurement approach is meant to streamline your capabilities across the full funnel stages; to connect the dots and fill the gap between first- and third-party insights and measurement solutions. By doing so, marketers will gain more confidence and derive more value out of their marketing ROI measurement portfolio.