Are your marketing metrics lying to you?

This newsletter comes from the hosts of The Marketing Architects, a research-first show answering your biggest marketing questions. Find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts!

This week, I’m joined by VP Analytics Matt Hultgren to explore an issue that could be costing your business millions... marketing misattribution. Learn how to spot it, why it matters, and what you can do to ensure your metrics tell the true story of your marketing efforts. 

—Elena  

39% of reported marketing metrics are vanity or campaign delivery metrics.    

According to a study by the Direct Marketing Association, nearly 40% of reported marketing metrics focus on campaign delivery rather than real business impacts.           

Misattribution is dangerous. And all too common.     

Misattribution, or incorrectly assigning credit for results, is a widespread issue that can damage your bottom line. Here’s what you should know. 

1. Over-attribution is common. Many marketing platforms overstate their impact. For example, if your business had 1,000 orders in a month and you saw reports claiming 500 orders were driven from Meta, 500 from Google, and 500 from TV—that totals 1,500 orders. Somewhere data is going wrong and counting orders that don’t exist.
2. Long response windows can skew results. While 14-21 days is typically sufficient, some vendors use response windows as long as 180 days, which leads to claiming credit for unrelated conversions. 
3. Lack of proper baselines results in inflated numbers. Without appropriate control groups for incrementality testing, results can appear much better than reality. 
4. The cost of misattribution is high. Relying on inflated metrics can lead to poor investment decisions for marketing budgets, potentially costing millions in wasted or under-optimized spend. 

To protect your marketing investments and ensure accurate measurement, establish a centralized data hub as your ‘source of truth,’ take time to set up proper measurement frameworks before launching campaigns, and understand how each analytics vendor’s attribution methodology fits into your overall ecosystem. 

Remember that all models have flaws, but many are still useful. The key is using multiple models to triangulate a realistic range of results rather than relying on a single "perfect" metric. Because that “perfect” metric? It doesn’t exist. 

Listen in on our discussion.

“Marketers ‘preoccupied with wrong effectiveness metrics’, study finds”    

This article by Ellen Hammett for MarketingWeek highlights the importance of measuring business effects and offers valuable insights for marketers looking to improve their own measurement strategies. 

Read the article.

The consequences of looking at the wrong metrics.                   

“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.” 

— Peter Drucker, management consultant and author