How much is wasted 37% or 47%. Unfortunately I havent read this book yet. In press review is 37% but on this site lead - 47%

Thanks for the post. And, thank you for your interest. I do hope you get a chance to read the book. Here is a cliff notes version of the calculations.

If you look at dollars spent (there is about 300 billion in the US alone), 37% is wasted. That number is based on projecting the effectiveness and efficiency of the campaigns we measured to the total spending. When we went to diagnose why the waste occurs (and how one could fix it), it generally can be traced back to missing the mark on 1) consumer Motivations, 2) Message, or 3) Media mix (spending past points of diminishing returns and not having a well balanced media mix).

If you look at the percent of time that marketers miss the mark on consumer Motivations, Message or Media mix, they miss the mark 47% of the time. But missing the mark doesn’t mean you waste all the money – for example, ING originally focused on “fresh thinking” and this misses the mark on consumer motivations. Most consumers don’t pick their financial service based on “fresh thinking” and therefore the ROI from focusing on this motivation resulted in waste. Their new message focuses on “simplifying a complex financial world” and that is a motivation more tightly linked to purchasing financial services. The “fresh thinking” message still had a positive effect, so not all the money was wasted, but it produced less than it could have.

Similarly, in Message, Colgate missed the mark with their online ads. Their original creative message didn’t show the Colgate logo until the last second of the online ad. The ad produced a paltry 2% lift on purchase intent over a control ad. The TV and magazine ads were pretty good though, so none of that money would be counted as wasted. Colgate redid their Online ad with persistent Colgate branding and the new ad produced 20% lift on purchase intent over a control, and the subsequent investment in online ads was therefore calculated as being a success.

Great! Thank you very much for your answer.