The first discussion is rooted in the decades old Wanamaker quote, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half,” which some might suggest has become the defacto tagline of the advertising industry and according to work we had a hand in, might be more truth in advertising than we’d care to admit.

So, this begs the question we’d put to marketers and agencies “How do you know for sure the ad campaign you developed will work?” or “How do you know if or what parts of it fail?” and “What will we do about it if it does?” Each of these is a critical question that we’ve found most marketers don’t really ask themselves. It begs the question to you, WHY?

So few people know how to address the issue of accountability in marketing generally and advertising in particular. I think part of it has to do with the fact the field tends to attract right-brain thinkers, not engineers who live to quantify. Plus, let's face it, research techniques based in the social sciences haven' t been very good predictors of purchase intent and getting hold of data that corelates actual purchase behavior with advertising has been difficult until recently. Old habits die hard.

From Media Daily news

The way to ensure success, Booz Allen suggests, is the elevation of marketing to strategic parity with other corporate disciplines, a move justified by marketers' savvy for analyzing ROI. The reason? The Internet has provided a variety of new data streams--which, along with refinement of existing metrics, allow marketers a grasp of basic ROI. This is the first characteristic of BAH's "growth champion": "They can identify their contributions to revenue growth, and they gain added authority from their ability to define return on investment (ROI)."

Still, Landry observes that many marketing organizations and CMOs are still struggling with accountability. The current metrics and approaches used to measure return, he says, are insufficient. "In many organizations, there is no consistent definition of ROI; they're using rules of thumb, they're using guidelines, and in many cases, they're using surrogate metrics. They may be looking at awareness, or household penetration. This is not ROI."

Link to article
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHom ePage&art_aid=47328