• by Nina Lentini  @Nina_Lentini, September 10, 2007

As today's Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Marketing Accountability Forum gets underway in Palm Beach, Fla., a recent study shows frustration among marketers who want better measurement of ROI within their companies.

(Watch for coverage of the event in this week's Marketing Daily.)

Increasingly, there is dissatisfaction in goal-setting and metrics and measurement processes, with too little integration between the marketing and finance departments, says the "2007 ANA/MMA Marketing Accountability Study," conducted in July by the ANA and the Marketing Management Analytics.

"A company's ability to make effective marketing decisions requires relevant and targeted metrics and measurements," says Bob Liodice, ANA president/CEO. "It is incumbent upon marketing to work cohesively with all cross-functional teams to establish common goals and processes to determine if those goals have been reached."

The study finds that 92% of more than 200 senior-level marketers/ANA members surveyed have some kind of marketing accountability process, but there is a lack of consistency in how they are managed. Thirty-one percent say the marketing department is solely responsible for them, 24% say they are informal efforts, 20% cite cross-functional management among marketing, IT and finance, and 17% say marketing and finance work together.

Compared to last year, frustration is rising--with dissatisfaction with ROI measurements up 7 percentage points, to 42%; lack of ROI definitions up 20 percentage points, to 45%; and poor organization response to ROI data up 16 percentage points, to 48%.

Effective measurement is still an issue for ANA marketers as evidenced by the dichotomy between what companies are measuring and what they feel is most important to measure. For example, 70% of respondents said "return on objective" was an important measure, yet only 36% were using that as a tool for measurement. (See related table on home page of Marketing Daily.)

The 2007 ANA Marketing Accountability Committee, formerly a task force, is comprised of 57 ANA member companies, including IBM, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, ING and Nestlé USA.