Media measurement is broken – but it doesn’t have to be

The fact is, however, that these methods are broken. Conversion pixels don’t work on Safari, Firefox or Edge. Exposures don’t include cookieless – or often connected television (CTV) impressions. Publishers are also starting to explore restricting measurement within their clean rooms.

Unfortunately, this status quo is not acceptable as we approach a potential recession, as most measurement marketers do today is at best a guess and could be leading to poor planning and optimization.

With the need to plan for an economic downturn and ensure that every ad dollar is justified, marketers must strengthen accountability across all activities – non-working measurement isn’t an option any more. Marketers need to find new ways to work with data scientists, analytics partners and other stakeholders to uncover valuable customer insights, unlock new audiences and understand what’s really working.

Marketers are not alone in this – the entire industry must collaborate to enable measurement across all channels and buying platforms, regardless of signal loss. Here are three key steps they can take to start.

Partnering with publishers

Similar to the old idiom ’the best defense is a good offense,’ one of the keys to improving measurement lies in looking beyond measurement, at the beginning of the marketing funnel.

Leveraging first-party data, which underpins the entire digital marketing ecosystem, can help to improve ad personalization, and in turn, measurement. This is because strong first-party data enables marketers to better understand their customers, thereby enabling better addressability and engagement.

One of the proven methods for enriching first-party data is establishing connections to publishers. Premium publishers are able to authenticate their traffic, because their audiences typically have to log in to access content. These consenting audiences provide detailed information to publishers about their activity and interests, which can then be used to collaborate with marketer first-party data to build customized campaigns.

Finally, marketers should remember that every impression that is authenticated is measurable and should prioritize buying authenticated impressions from their premium publishers.

Bridging key channels

From the aforementioned complexities caused by the deprecation of third-party cookies, to newer channels like mobile and advanced TV, third-party identifiers are on the decline. Simultaneously, the complexity of campaigns and volume of channels that marketers are working in is exploding.

In the same way that customers’ buying journeys are all part of the same process – and customers won’t stop to differentiate whether they saw a brand's advertisement on CTV or engaged with an email campaign to download an ebook that the brand is pushing – measurement all needs to be a part of the same process. No matter what the medium, visibility into customers is crucial. In particular, brands need to have a granular understanding of how their campaigns in every medium affect the customer journey.

Without the ability to understand customer behavior across all touchpoints, optimization and proper planning cannot happen. The key to bridging these channels is people-based identity – a deterministic identity rooted in consumer trust.

Implement people-based measurement

Once a brand is working with premium publishers and has people-based identity, the next step is measuring the consumer journey. At the core of people-based measurement is the ability to link exposure data either in the marketer’s data lake or clean room, the publisher’s clean room or a third-party measurement provider to real-world events, like in-store transactions.

By aggregating together all impressions that a marketer buys and linking to a people-based ID, the marketer can better understand the consumer journey, true frequency and reach and ultimately, what drove the consumer to take the actions they did. Further, the marketer can bring in online and offline conversion data and events to more fully understand the consumer’s journey.

Understanding and being able to measure customers through every stage of the customer journey enables marketers to measure the impact of these stages on customer behavior and loyalty. Marketers can look beyond campaigns and short-term gains and instead focus on customer relationships – giving them more leeway to focus on relationship-building and other upper-funnel activities, while still focusing on the activities that build the most customer value across the board.

Looking ahead

Given the current state of digital marketing, as well as looming ecosystem changes, it’s clear that marketers cannot stay static when it comes to measurement solutions. Any holdover approaches – especially those that marketers have relied on in years past – will soon cease to function, leaving laggards in the dark when it comes to campaign performance and customer insights.

Marketers making much-needed updates to their measurement strategies will find that omnichannel, people-based measurement offers much better insight and visibility into their customers, enabling them to plan campaigns that can truly meet customers where they are and drive meaningful results.

Travis Clinger is senior vice-president of activations and addressability at LiveRamp.