• by Tanya Gazdik , August 2, 2016

Brands, media and agencies all report that the number one challenge continues to be measuring or proving ROI. They all expect that the biggest increase in spend on research tools will be for sales linkage/ROI studies.

That’s according to a study released Monday by Millward Brown Digital. Getting Digital Right, the third annual look at the state of marketing in a connected world, is based on input from more than 300 senior U.S. marketers spanning brands, media companies, and agencies. 

Seventy-four percent of marketers indicated they would increase their cross-channel spend if there were an increased ability to track ROI, said Aaron Peterson, corporate marketing manager for Millward Brown Digital.

“Essentially, it boils down to this: cross-platform planning and execution across all touchpoints is the key to achieving next-level marketing ROI,” Peterson tells Marketing Daily.

Over half (55%) of marketers said they were “not confident” in their organization’s understanding of the consumer journey for their industry. 

“That’s a striking result, since understanding the consumer journey and their behaviors is essential to informing media mix and creative execution,” Peterson says. 

Research shows the industry still has opportunities to integrate approaches across engagements and unlock behaviors on the path to mastering ROI. The industry is still searching for an integrated approach to ROI measurement, with 74% saying they would increase spend in digital and 43% would spend in traditional, if better tools existed.

Although brand confidence in the use of Big Data is increasing, the majority of marketers lack confidence in their ability to maintain an understanding of consumer behavior and are uncertain that they are using the right media mix in reaching them.

Marketers’ confidence that they are using the right media mix has increased slightly. While the percentage of marketers who said they were confident that they have the optimal media mix between traditional and digital grew slightly since last year, the percentage of those expressing doubt saw even greater growth.

Brands’ confidence in use of Big Data increased since the last study. However, confidence among brands is still low, with 41% of confident in their organization’s use of Big Data, compared to 59% of media and 60% of agency respondents.