Despite spending $560 billion annually on global advertising, marketers have long struggled to measure the impact of brand advertising on sales outcomes. In fact, nearly half of CFOs surveyed by McKinsey & Company said the reason marketing proposals had been declined or not fully funded in the past was that they didn’t demonstrate a clear line to value.
This isn’t because top-of-funnel brand investments don’t connect to bottom-of-funnel outcomes; rather, it’s because the connection is too far in the future for traditional measurement approaches designed for short-term sales measurement. The well-known short-term bias MTA and Sales Lift prevents CMOs from demonstrating the long-term outcomes of brand investments, and prevents media execs from identifying long-term media efficiencies. This dilemma is now even driving a “race to the bottom” that threatens TV advertising, which is increasingly being compared to lower-cost digital channels on short-term metrics for which TV isn’t designed.
As an answer to this industry challenge, Upwave is proud to announce our latest platform feature: Customer Forecast. This industry-first metric, validated by real sales data, enables marketers to finally gain an understanding of which media strategies are driving future customer growth and retention.
Customer Forecast connects brand metrics like awareness, consideration, purchase intent and favorability with the propensity of a consumer to become a customer of a brand. Customer Forecast pulls the impact on future sales to the present, allowing marketers to make optimization decisions in real-time while campaigns are still in flight.
With the addition of Customer Forecast in our analytics platform, marketers now have the most comprehensive data around which paid brand media tactics are driving future customer growth. This exciting new capability helps brands and agencies prove that investing in brands is investing in customers for long-term growth, not just short-term sales lift.
To learn more about Customer Forecast and the methodology behind this metric, download our latest white paper here, or watch our recent Expert Update here.
