January 25, 2023
ANA Releases 'KPIs That Matter,' Finds The Most Important Ones Aren't Always The Most Used
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, May 18, 2021
The most important KPIs, or key performance indicators, used by advertisers to assess the value and effectiveness of their advertising and media aren't necessarily the ones they use most often, according to the findings of a new report from the Association of National Advertisers.
The report, "Media KPIs That Matter," …
2 comments about "ANA Releases 'KPIs That Matter,' Finds The Most Important Ones Aren't Always The Most Used".
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This report makes me wonder whether anyone involved understands what the term "key performance Indicator"--or KPI means. When we are told that most advertising marketing execs don't even rate CPMs as important while CPM tops the list for media people isn't this a signal that something continues to be very wrong. How can a CPM, calculated on wildly inflational and often inaccurate "audience" data indicate anything? Why are media people still wedded to such a misleading yardstick of "performance"? Most important, why don't media and marketing people speak the same language? Why the disconnect? We are told that media planning and buying is integrated with creative and client marketing---but is this true? This study suggests that the answer, in too many cases, is it aint.
I don't think it's so much that media and marketing don't speak the same language, or even that there's a huge disconnect from the top of a marketing organization to the bottom. I think it's VERY hard to buy media in real-time with influences such as Lifetime Value or in some cases even ROAS (because both would have to be predictive - doable, just not often enough). Totally agree that CPM is definitely not a proxy to greater, more important metrics. I believe this study is pointing out that organizations (internal & with partners) need to do a better job of connecting real-time buying capabilities with actual business performance. For e-commerce only companies, this is much easier to do than large organizations that depend on brick & mortar sales of any kind.