1. Which Half is Wasted? "Marketing accountability" and "marketing attribution" are two buzzwords sweeping the marketing world. Both reflect the urgent need for organizations to better understand the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. The oft-quoted line, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't now which half," is attributed to John Wanamaker, a nineteenth century department store merchant. In the century following Wanamaker, companies spent vast sums of marketing dollars without being able to measure the real value of the spending. A company's marketing mix that included print, radio, and television - and various promotions layered on top of the media - made it even more difficult to determine which marketing efforts were most effective. Advertising Accountability More recently, the Internet emerged as the first medium that promised true accountability. Analytic tools enabled marketers to track an individual's exposure to a marketing message and his or her subsequent buying behavior (a "conversion" in ecommerce terms). For the first time marketing ROI could be easily calculated. But with a multitude of online marketing touchpoints, first generation analytic tools gave an incomplete picture. Advertisers that only track from click to conversion and determine a ROI for the conversion ignore the impact of earlier marketing exposures. Multi-campaign Attribution A new more robust set of tools has emerged that take into account the multiple marketing exposures that may contribute to a conversion. Forrester defines multi-campaign attribution as "The practice of attributing credit to all marketing exposures that led to a Web site and subsequently resulted in a conversion event, rather than attributing all credit to the exposure immediately preceding the conversion." A number of companies have developed analytic tools to assign and attribute a concrete value to pre-purchase online exposures. An Incomplete Picture But even if sophisticated tools measure the value of all online exposures to brand messaging, they still paint an incomplete picture. "Any engagement metric, regardless of first, middle or last ad seen, is limited in value if it's contained to the digital marketing ecosystem and ignores other marketing inputs," said Rob Norman, CEO of GroupM Interaction, part of WPP Group, quoted in Adweek. Companies are trying to fill in the gaps. Organizations today are more focused on marketing accountability than ever. In September the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) reported the results of a study revealing companies have stepped up their emphasis and focus on marketing accountability practices. More companies are relying on cross-functional marketing accountability teams and using sophisticated analytics and modeling tools. "With marketers, CFO's and CEOs paying more attention to each dollar spent, marketing accountability processes have become strategic imperatives," said Bob Liodice, President and CEO, ANA. Elusive Goal Marketers today are taking advantage of all the tools available to try to answer the question Wanamaker posed over 100 years ago. Reaching the elusive goal of complete accountability still remains more of a goal than a reality. PromoAid The focus on accountability places more pressure than ever on marketing organizations to select the right marketing services companies to deliver results. In today's environment, a service like PromoAid is an indispensible resource to identify the vendor most likely to help you achieve your marketing objectives.