Digital marketing lacking suitable ROI metrics

• Results of global study on digital marketing released
• Done by Eyeblaster and TNS
• Total market spend expected to grow 30% over next two years

Regional - A new global study on digital marketing has revealed 44% of marketers blame a lack of suitable metrics to measure impact and ROI as a barrier to cross channel adoption in campaigns.

The study, which was done by Eyeblaster in partnership with TNS, shows a gap exists between the appreciation of cross channel campaigns and true cross channel integration as nearly 67% of respondents cite that they already are running cross channel campaigns - yet only 12% are actually integrating cross channel performance data.

Other barriers to cross channel adoption cited by marketers are a lack of case studies to prove cross channel effectiveness (37%), and a lack of technology (34%).

Eyeblaster's VP operations, APAC, Mick O'Brien said the survey results are a "good snapshot" of what the state of the industry is currently.

"The US and Europe tend to lead the way when it comes to technologies and reporting capabilities, and a far more advanced than the Asian countries including Australia.

"These are global concerns with regards to how people are tracking their campaigns," he said.

The survey also found that marketers expect total market spending to grow by 30% over the next two years with a third of the market experiencing growth over 50%. When respondents were asked, ‘once enabled to accept digital advertising, which channel will have the greatest impact?' both TV and mobile were most widely considered across brand and response.

"The problems is marketers have been trying to gain access to better tools that do provide this ROI analysis and they have been lacking access to this technologies," O'Brien said.

"It does exist and Eyeblaster and other companies like DoubleClick are investing in this area  to provide better reporting metrics."

The study was conducted in March 2009, among 400 marketing senior marketing executives across North America, EMEA and APAC.

The complete survey results are available here.