Marketers in dark over digital ROI

Marketers in dark over digital ROIA lack of clarity around new digital advertising techniques means that European marketers cannot measure whether two-thirds (76%) of their budgets are hitting the mark, according to a new report by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).
The study quizzed 29 companies across the world operating in 15 different industry sectors.
It aim was to investigate what advertisers think of the media auditing companies responsible for policing media value and interrogating media agencies, and to establish what the future has in store for the detectives of the media industry.
In Europe, it found that only 23% of digital budgets are measured, which is actually a slight improvement on the previous year (17%). However, in some territories – most notably the US and Latin America – the percentage of digital impressions auditors can measure fell from 25% to 12% and 9% to 3% respectively.
The main reason is the rise of services such as programmatic buying, which have yet to have auditing standards in place.
Matt Green, senior manager of marketing communications at the WFA, said: “As it stands auditors are not delivering in the way that advertisers need them to. As auditors evolve their digital services away from the classic benchmarking, advertisers need to work closer with them to set objectives based on real business outcomes rather than just buying media to satisfy audit results.”