How organizations can enhance marketing measurement for better ROI

A two-step approach to upgrading marketing measurement capabilities can empower them to tackle complexities, improve insights and drive growth.

In brief

• Challenges like data silos and unclear metrics impede organizations’ efforts to achieve effective marketing measurement and strategic decision-making.
• Building a strong data foundation and establishing clear KPIs are crucial for aligning marketing efforts with overall business goals and boosting ROI.
• The EY-Adobe collaboration aims to help companies overcome data silos and establish clear KPIs through modern marketing measurement tools and techniques. 

Marketing is increasingly expected to function as an efficient growth engine, placing mounting pressure on leaders to deliver measurable and defensible impact. Shifting macroeconomics, consumer behavior, signal deprecation, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs), and heightened privacy expectations have accelerated the need for improved measurement and optimization strategies. 

Marketing measurement is no longer just a reporting function for campaign performance — it is a strategic engine for customer-centricity, spend efficiency and growth. Leading marketing organizations are evolving beyond surface-level metrics to build an adaptive and comprehensive measurement and planning system that:

• Justifies and optimizes marketing spend across paid, owned and earned channels
• Scales across products, regions and business units
• Identifies opportunities across complex media and promotional channels
• Simulates scenarios to power data-driven decisions
• Rapidly delivers incremental insights that inform investment and support clear ROI

Marketers need measurement and planning capabilities that enable them to predict performance, simulate unlimited scenarios, and rapidly redistribute capacity and investment. Yet, various challenges have been hindering their ability to effectively assess and optimize their marketing efforts. These include:

• Data integration issues: A significant obstacle for marketers is integrating data across various platforms and channels to produce a comprehensive view of performance. According to a recent survey of marketers by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), most respondents (88%) find this integration a challenge.

Source: Association of National Advertisers (ANA) survey, June 26, 2025.

• Silos: Data silos within organizations obstruct effective measurement and decision-making. The ANA survey revealed that 48% of marketers consider data integration and silos to be the biggest challenge in the accurate measurement and attribution of marketing performance.

• Lack of standardized metrics: Establishing well-defined KPIs is crucial for aligning marketing efforts with broader business objectives. Without clear KPIs, attributing marketing efforts to business outcomes becomes difficult.
• Resource constraints: Many marketing teams face budget cuts, staffing shortages and limited capacity that limit their ability to deliver fast insights and implement scalable measurement strategies. According to the 2025 Gartner CMO Spend Survey, marketing leaders expect budget cuts across various resource areas: Reduced agency and labor budgets are anticipated by 39% of CMOs each, while 18% expect cuts to media budgets and 12% foresee reductions in technology budgets.¹

To address these challenges, organizations must strengthen their marketing measurement capabilities and set themselves up for success in an increasingly complex and competitive landscape. Recognizing and overcoming these obstacles positions marketers to make data-driven decisions that drive growth and improve their overall performance. A pragmatic, two-step approach is to first, lay the foundation with critical enablers, and second, implement unified measurement approaches.

Step 2: Implement unified measurement approaches

The value of connecting performance measurement across both aggregate (marketing mix modeling [MMM]) and touch point (multi-touch attribution [MTA]) levels is clear. While no single measurement method is perfect, brands recognize that a unified approach delivers more reliable insights. But without the right tools, this value can be diminished by decreased accuracy, greater time requirements and limited scalability.

Ten years ago, Adobe set out to build a unified measurement solution for their marketing team — one that was AI-powered, scalable and fast. After years of testing the technology internally, Adobe brought Adobe Mix Modeler to market. The result — a modern measurement and planning solution that unifies MMM and MTA results through a patent-pending, AI and machine learning bidirectional transfer technique.

Mix Modeler’s unified methodology measures incrementality at both the touch point and aggregate levels, promoting consistency in measurement holistically across paid, owned and earned channels. Key capabilities include:

• A complete view of incremental marketing channel performance
• Seamless data ingestion and data management through a platform-first approach
• Scenario planning that supports “goal-seek” optimization tied to marketing objectives and targets
• The ability to forecast incremental marketing ROI with confidence
• In-flight campaign optimization capabilities through flexible dashboards

The unified view empowers marketers to communicate their efforts’ enterprise-level value and develop a real-time understanding of the impact of adjustments to their spend. Mix Modeler helps organizations gain needed marketing insights while eliminating the resource demands of building the capability internally.

To help companies realize Mix Modeler’s benefits, the EY and Adobe teams work together, drawing on EY professionals’ knowledge and experience in technology investment, change management and process optimization, alongside Adobe’s market-leading technology. The EY-Adobe Alliance works to unlock data-driven insights that help organizations understand and maximize the return on their marketing investments.