The vast majority of marketing organisations have begun to significantly accelerate efforts to adopt advanced attribution methods, to the tune of a surveyed 78 percent committed to deploying cross-channel attribution within the next two years, according to a new survey.
The research, conducted by IDG Connect, indicates that joining up data and reorganizing staff are key obstacles in achieving effective cross-channel measurments.
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The rapidly growing number of marketing channels, measurement systems and processes are often spread across many disconnected tools, teams, and services, making it difficult for marketers to understand actual performance metrics across and between channels.
Just 26 percent of organizations use more accurate statistical modeling and algorithms to calculate marketing impact, while 23 percent still rely on last-touch attribution, an outdated and misleading method of measuring performance.
The need for staff training and realignment, as well as concerns about numerous data integrations and costs are the top reasons marketing leaders have not adopted more sophisticated methods.
“Almost 40 percent of marketers plan to use at least six channels to reach their target audience, and truly understanding ongoing performance requires timely integration of data from all of them,” said Bob Johnson, lead IDG Connect analyst on the survey of 250 enterprise and SMB marketing executives. “What we are seeing is that marketing appears ready to embrace a single source view to better measure and analyze key marketing performance indicators. A holistic cross-channel approach with a single solution is one way to address this need.”
The survey explored how marketers view attribution technology, the maturity of their measurement processes, and the challenges they face reporting results and identifying areas of improvement.
“While the need for cross-channel attribution has long been widely contemplated, and much field was plowed by first generation providers, attribution must be an integral part of a marketer’s technology stack and integrated with all data sources” said Alison Lohse, COO and co-founder of, Conversion Logic, the media industry’s most accurate unified marketing analytics provider and sponsor of the survey. “The results of this survey indicate marketers finally have confidence in their broader organization’s willingness to invest in smarter, unified cross-channel tools to measure performance of so many different channels and how they affect each other.”
Other key findings in the survey results include:
· Most marketers are using six or more different tools to collect performance data.
· 59% say data collection and centralization is their biggest challenge and half have concerns about accuracy.
· The main obstacles to greater adoption of cross-channel attribution are cost justification (70%), lack of appropriate skills on the marketing team (56%) and integration with existing measurement methods (48%).
· Marketers are looking for attribution systems that are easy to implement and use and provide actionable intelligence.
The survey digs deeper into what marketers need to overcome and what they desire in a unified marketing analytics solution. For more information and additional findings, download the research brief here: http://report.conversionlogic.com/idgconnect-survey-download/. IDG Connect and Conversion Logic will host a webinar on June 1 to discuss the challenges associated with unified measurement and how to determine if you have outgrown your current tools. Register today at http://report.conversionlogic.com/unified-marketing-measurement-webinar/.