Effectiveness and Measurement in a Digital Age: Change is constant. 

The media landscape changes at an ever-increasing pace. Blink and you miss the advent of new channels, formats, and the next hype across the industry. At Golley Slater, we love innovation, it provides us with a wealth of opportunities for our clients and sparks our creativity, meaning better work and results for our clients.

In line with this pace of change, measurement and attribution models are being developed at a rapid pace to keep up with advertisers’ needs. We have in-platform metrics, third-party measurement, automated reports, and analysis for every digital channel in the media landscape. The level of data available to us has changed the game when it comes to analysing and optimising activity to achieve best results for our clients. On the surface, this is great! But zooming out, what do all these metrics mean in relation to a brand’s overall health?

This blog post will recap eminent marketing theory, reminding us of the core ideas and explores why perhaps, as an industry, we’re still on the journey of being able to measure the true effectiveness of digital channels.

It is somewhat surprising that despite the rapid development of our industry, much advertising theory has eluded the tidal wave of change and has remained consistent in its thinking. Yes, media owners will drumroll sparkly new research, industry gurus will deliver talks at Cannes and global conferences with updated findings and insights. But, at the core of these updates are similar central thoughts shining through, with certain channels and planning techniques continuing to lead the way on effectiveness and ROI.

Reminder of the theory.

Brand building is still the most important driver of growth, and it still requires broad reach advertising. Building a brand is a long-term job. It creates mental structures that will encourage potential customers to choose one brand over another. It’s about nudging potential customers over time with a broad net to reach everyone, rather than just those in market. But because most of the audience are not in the market at the time they are exposed, it cannot assume close attention or even interest. This is why emotion is so important in brand advertising, people probably won’t remember the ad, but they may remember how it made them feel- reinforcing their long-term memory structures of a company or brand. Predictably, brand advertising lives well on AV channels like Cinema, TV and VOD.

Sales activation focuses on people who might buy or convert now. This requires tight targeting to an in-market group and messaging is more rational, with useful information on the potential purchase. Activation advertising relies on a response mechanism to ensure customers can go straight to a purchase or data capture. This is a short-term job at a low frequency. Activation advertising sits well on Social, PPC, or Direct Mail.

Sales activation and brand work together to support a full funnel effect, as explained by Les Binet and Peter Field in their well-known ‘The Long and the Short of it’ work.

There have been new stances on this theory over time, but this remains the respected front-runner across agency planning and strategy departments. A balanced mix of brand and activation is needed to achieve profit – 60/40 is still the recommended split.  

What does this mean for us in a ‘digital age’?  

With fewer barriers to entry, coupled with the plethora of formats and targeting options; after bursting onto the scene a decade or so ago, social and digital channels are now frequently leading media plans. Clients with modest budgets are enticed by the low cost to entry, targeting and measurement options and are demoting above the line channels for their campaigns.   

When it comes to measuring conversions, digital gives us a line of sight we don’t have with linear channels. Being able to attribute digital performance is brilliant for routine reporting; enabling our activation teams to optimise campaigns based on audience engagement insights and platform delivery.  This is great news for agencies and clients, but as Les Binet pointed out in his talk at Cannes Lions 2023, could relying on digital attribution too heavily lead to some areas of discrepancy? After all, these channels are still relatively new in the grand scheme of advertising. Although it seems like we’ve been online forever, as an industry, we’re not fully leveraging technology and data just yet. When compared to a channel like TV, the industry had several decades to refine planning, buying, and measurement. It’s important to keep in mind that we’re still on that journey with digital.   

Could we be misattributing? 

To bring his hypothesis on misattribution to life, this diagram below from Les Binet, 3rd Age of Effectiveness, IPA, 2023, illustrates how current digital attribution methods could be underestimating the indirect long-term effects by a factor of 7. 

In his talk, he discussed the vision of digital measurement, where the goal was to attribute every detail and track consumer behaviour and attitudes in real time. However, the reality is that people often don’t act as they claim, data can be unreliable, and brand growth frequently comes from light buyers or new customers who leave little to no data trail. He suggests that digital attribution, as we currently understand it, is fundamentally flawed: 

• Most responses are indirect- most people don’t click on ads but will go away and act on the message later, organically.
• Incrementality – a lot of short-term “direct” sales are not incremental- these people may have been ready to purchase anyway and clicked on a paid ad.
• Long term effects – most of sales from ads come indirectly, often much later- we can’t measure these with digital attribution tools in platform.

Now, while I am a big fan of Binet’s thinking, I understand the context—he leads effectiveness at a traditional creative agency that naturally has a vested interest in keeping big TV ads on the table for their clients. However, I still find his viewpoint intriguing- the implication is that, as an industry, we haven’t quite mastered digital attribution yet.

Econometrics. 

Examining measurement and attribution from a different perspective, econometrics or Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) offers a way to measure both the short- and long-term impact of advertising in a more balanced, though time-intensive, manner. A recent industry-leading meta-analysis titled Profit Ability 2 was conducted by Ebiquity, EssenceMediacom, Gain Theory, Mindshare, and Wavemaker. This study analysed econometric data from 141 brands, covering £1.8 billion in media spend across 10 channels and 14 businesses. Interestingly, their findings align with some of Binet’s views, showing that indirect, long-term responses play a critical role in driving sales and ROI. One key takeaway (as shown in the image) was that the payback from Linear TV—both immediately, over several months, and even up to two years post-campaign—outperforms all other channels. 

It is surprising that in 2024, linear TV proves such a strong ROI performance. This draws a parallel with IPA databank evidence which Peter Field presented at the ITV Showcase 2024– which illustrated how emotional advertising drives effectiveness and market share growth.  

And hot on the heels of emotion driving market growth, is the Meta 2022 study (below) which echoes this. Remarkably, attributing most online sales to TV and Online video and most sales overall attributed to long term effects. 

A look to the future. 

Where does that leave us? Despite the positive attention TV receives, the findings from Profitability 2 show that digital channels also play a critical role in driving ROI. Generic PPC ranks as the second-largest contributor to profit, just behind Linear TV.  

While some misattribution may occur within platform tracking and measurement tools, PPC remains a valuable channel when assessed using econometrics. 

We’re operating in a time where we can either access detailed, channel-specific, fragmented data with ease, or rely on econometric studies that provide a broader view, though they take longer to produce and often arrive after campaign planning has begun. As technology evolves, I’m confident that agencies will be able to measure the entire media mix in real-time, without the risk of misattribution or silos between channels. 

As I was finalising this blog post, the IPA released a report introducing a new approach to effectiveness culture, aimed at helping marketers navigate the complexities of achieving effectiveness. The ‘Making Effectiveness Work’ report, published in October 2024, advises marketers to prioritise learning within their effectiveness culture and to avoid seeking a single “silver bullet” solution. Instead, the report recommends that organisations adopt a MESI (Model-Experiment-Simulate-Implement) approach in their learning strategies.

This MESI model combines various methods and can be applied to tactical, campaign, and strategic decisions. According to the IPA, the initial step in the MESI approach is to start with a model, which could include marketing mix modelling (MMM), data-driven attribution, or consumer modelling. The goal is to map marketing effectiveness and identify the most impactful changes to the plan. This is a timely response from the industry to the themes covered in this blog post. I hope the advent of this model helps drive innovation in the effectiveness and measurement arena of the advertising industry.

In the meantime, it’s the responsibility of planning and strategy teams to utilise all available data to make informed decisions tailored to the specific context of each campaign.