Feeling the need to better track their return on investment, it seems social media is the latest channel to get it in the neck from marketers for its lack of measurability.
In a survey of over 400 US marketers, 74% said they would plough more of their money into networks such as Facebook and Twitter if only their ability to track ROI would improve.
That’s not to say that social media is suffering hugely from a ‘big’ measurability problem. Spend within the channel is set to rise by 33% year on year in 2015 to hit $23.68 billion, according to eMarketer estimates, with US and Chinese advertisers driving the growth.
But with better tools for tracking social investments, this figure could creep further towards the $27.05 billion spent on display advertising this year.
Playing catch-up
Another channel lacking an ROI edge is mobile, with 80% of marketers pledging to increase their spend on smartphone and tablet advertising with greater visibility over what it does.
According to the study, conducted by marketing solutions provider Millward Brown Digital, 50% of marketers feel that demonstrating ROI is a top priority when it comes to assigning budget.
Further to this, in a separate piece of research, from Deloitte and salesforce.com, 53% of chief marketing officers expected their team’s responsibilities to have a greater focus ROI in the coming years.
Part of tracking ROI includes effective use of data, and it was alarming to find only 14% of the Millward Brown study’s respondents expressing confidence in being able to utilise this.
“As far as digital has come over the past few years, this study shows that we still have quite a ways to go,” said Millward Brown president Stephen DiMarco.