Marketers’ ROI views differ by global location

The 2024 Nielsen Annual Marketing Report found marketers in North or Latin America were more likely to favour marketing mix modelling (MMM) to measure the return of investment (ROI), while European and Asia-Pacific marketers prefer a media metrics approach.

Marketing mix modelling considers how a campaign has affected sales volumes by looking at calculations of the volume of products/services sold by each unit of effort, or the sales generated divided by the cost of a campaign.

Media metrics, meanwhile, look at interactions such as views, reach, click through rates, cost per click and cost per mille (the cost of every 1,000 impressions).

Nielsen surveyed 1,514 marketers with budgets of US $1 million or more during December 2023 for the study and found that, globally, 30% of respondents considered media metrics to be more holistic in determining ROI, compared to 28% for MMM.

However, in North America, MMM was highest at 29% (compared to 28% for media metrics) and in Latin America MMM dominated at 31% to just 23% in favour of media metrics.

In Asia 36% of marketers said media metrics were most holistic, compared to 27% in favour of MMM and in Europe, 31% said media metrics were most indicative, compared to 26% for MMM.

Surveys and attribution were consider the worst ways to measure return in this year’s survey.