Marketers say their trust in measurement is stalled

Marketers’ confidence in measurement has plateaued at a time when it should be rising, according to new research from TransUnion and eMarketer.

The research, “The True Cost of Trust in Marketing Measurement,” found 62% of the marketers surveyed have some confidence in their performance metrics, but 54% reported no change in confidence year over year, while 14% said it has actually declined.

The research also found that 60% of marketers say internal stakeholders question the validity of their metrics at least sometimes. Nearly 29% report that up to 20% of their marketing budgets have been reallocated or put at risk due to doubts about measurement accuracy. 

The increased pressure means proving performance is critical: 67% of the respondents now prioritize incremental ROI, followed closely by aligning marketing metrics to business outcomes (66%) and improving cross-channel attribution (55%).

Top barriers to accurate marketing measurement

The marketers in the survey cited siloed and incomplete data (49%), cross-channel deduplication issues (48%) and walled-garden reporting limitations (41%) as their top barriers to accurate measurement.

Nearly 30% of marketers are facing moderate to significant cuts to measurement and analytics budgets, and many are turning to AI to sustain capabilities, the research found. Half of respondents adopted or plan to adopt AI or machine learning to automate reporting, with 40% citing data analysis and reporting as the top use case.

At the same time, the survey found dissatisfaction with existing measurement technology (26%) is prompting long-term investment: nearly half (47%) plan to increase spend on marketing mix modeling (MMM) in the next year, while 35% expect to increase investment in multitouch attribution (MTA).

The research surveyed 196 U.S. marketers.