• Ad Age , Wednesday, July 16, 2008 11 AM

Six in 10 financial executives believe their companies' marketing departments have an inadequate understanding of financial controls, and seven in 10 say their companies don't use marketing inputs and forecasts in financial guidance to Wall Street or in public disclosures, according to research was carried out for the Association of National Advertisers by Aegis Group's Marketing Management Analytics (MMA); Financial Executive magazine, and Ed See, former president of MMA and principal of Ed See Associates.

"They don't believe the numbers," says Jeffrey Marshall, the retired editor in chief of Financial Executive, who worked on the study.

On the whole, the findings show that CFOs appear comfortable with how their companies tally up marketing spending: 80% of respondents said their firms have an adequate audit trail for tracking what was spent. And more than four of five firms in the survey had some sort of marketing ROI metrics in place. But fewer than four in 10 financial executives surveyed say marketing forecasts made inside their companies are audit-ready -- meaning the forecasts could stand the scrutiny of a standard corporate audit.

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