Media measurement has become more important, and challenging, than ever. I see this across all the clients I meet with. As traditional user tracking methods become ineffective, marketers must navigate an increasingly fragmented landscape to find the right measurement solution. What I've seen lead to success for marketing teams is securing a reliable, single source of truth for both measurement reporting and optimization that enables data-driven decisions that maximize impact and efficiency.
With the pressure on to find the right partner, because it’s a big investment, here are questions you and your team should prioritize when evaluating a potential measurement vendor:
#1 Measurement
Is their methodology future-proof?
You want to steer clear of vendors that rely on user tracking data, pixels, or cookies, such as last-touch or Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA). Most measurement solutions founded in the past 15 years built their offerings in the pre-privacy era based on a user-level attribution methodology. But even before user-level attribution was broken beyond repair, MTA has always struggled to optimize beyond low-funnel performance marketing.
Do they approach measurement with a holistic methodology?
You should find a methodology that triangulates signals from advanced Media Mix Modeling (MMM), incrementality testing, and platform reporting for the most accurate, timely, and actionable view of your marketing performance. A measurement partner that can calibrate MMM with incrementality testing can empower your marketing team to drive substantially better business performance, improve sales, and achieve marketing measurement success.
Does their methodology cover your entire portfolio and report at a granular level?
Ideally, you want both comprehensive coverage of all your channels and campaign-level granularity that’s updated daily. By calibrating MMM with incrementality tests and applying results to a more granular attribution framework, marketers have a more advanced way of ensuring that their brand is capturing the full impact of their entire media mix based on causal ground truth experimentation.
#2 Tools and Automation
What’s their level of automation and flexibility?
Testing takes a lot of time and can be high risk when not executed correctly. There are three key attributes for a best-in-class media testing solution: Market selection, automation and monitoring, and robust result calculation. Make sure a prospective vendor can check all of these boxes and can ensure there are guardrails to make it easy and productive.
Do they offer reporting suitable for all members of your team? Cross-functional alignment is key to validating marketing’s performance and improving budget allocation workflows. Make sure a prospective vendor can help everyone in your organization adapt to a new measurement and optimization practice with ease, ensuring easy access to insights tailored to their responsibilities. For example:
- Does the tool make it easy to prove its value? Your vendor should be able to easily demonstrate its ROI to help you build alignment between marketing and finance for sustainable growth.
- How long does it take to onboard? You should look to have a comprehensive media reporting solution, bespoke to your data, with actionable insights in 2-4 weeks.
- Will your team adopt it?
Daily reporting, real-time alerts, and comprehensive dashboards all encourage easy adoption.
How advanced are their budget planning capabilities?
You want actionable recommendations guiding you to an optimal media mix based on actual and predicted performance, seasonality, diminishing returns, etc.
How does their platform integrate with your day-to-day workflow?
Look for a comprehensive list of automated API adapters for both ingesting and exporting data. Their platform should interoperate with your existing analytics tools and data science models.
How interoperable is their platform?
A quality vendor should be able to ingest 3rd party measurement models and output reporting into your brand’s custom BI tools.
#3 Expertise & Support
How many years has the vendor been around?
It takes years to build and hone a quality measurement system, so make sure your vendor is credible and has the depth and breadth of testing experience needed to answer your hard business questions.
What kind of analytics support do they provide?
You should have an expert analytics team servicing your account, helping you design experiments and analyze results for actionable insights. These teams should also be able to illuminate patterns in test results across large swaths of brands that inform campaign and channel execution strategies.
#4 Robust & Secure Infrastructure
How confident are you in their security and compliance measures?
In today’s privacy-centric world, certifications such as the ISO27001 SA and SOC2 Type 2 should be important to your business.
Do they have a fully managed data infrastructure?
Ideally, their infrastructure should automatically bring in all of your essential data (from media platforms, sales transaction data, and CRM systems).
Conclusion
At Measured, we're pioneers in incrementality measurement, not just another shiny new service or technology provider. With decades of expertise, we excel in pinpointing the causal, incremental impact of advertising on business outcomes, turning complex data into actionable insights.
If you’re interested in partnering with the industry’s leading media measurement and optimization partner with a world-class customer service team, book a demo with a Measured expert today.