Changing measurement in large organisations is about as easy as getting everyone in that organisation to all change religions. This bold claim from Jeff Greenfield, CEO of Provalytics highlights the central crisis in modern marketing. We have become so addicted to the immediate gratification of a “click.” We have forgotten how to build actual brands.
The Fatal Flaw of the Last Click
In 2007, Greenfield was buying media for a weight loss company. When forced to cut 90 percent of the budget, he followed the data. He cut the non-brand search terms that looked inefficient on a last-click basis. Two weeks later, new customer acquisition plummeted by 50 percent. The data seemed correct, but it painted a skewed view of the truth. People were discovering the brand through general searches and only converting through the brand name later. By cutting the top of the funnel, he had destroyed the results for the bottom.
The Performance Marketing Trap
Digital marketing allowed us to finally prove we got something for our money. This led to a generation of marketers who go from a sale backwards to a click. However, this is not how humans work. We do not invest dollars to buy clicks. We invest dollars to buy attention. Attention leads to awareness, and awareness leads to the store. If the store is online, that is where the click happens. By focusing only on the bottom of the funnel, we have seen ad effectiveness drop considerably.
Why GA4 is Consistently Wrong
Most major companies use Google Analytics 4 as their source of truth. Greenfield argues that it should actually be called Google’s Reporting. It has no place for connected television, podcasts, or traditional branding. It measures what Google wants it to measure. In the corporate world, it is often more important to be consistent than to be right. Large companies choose GA4 because it is consistent, even if it is consistently wrong.
The Creative Crisis
We spend so much time on data that we have forgotten the creative. Greenfield reminds his clients that 70 percent of marketing work is the creative messaging. Currently, the average attention span is only 47 seconds. Marketers have a difficult task to get attention from someone who is constantly interrupted. AI offers a solution here. We can now create content in five minutes that used to cost millions of dollars. This allows for the constant iteration that modern attention spans demand.
The New Way Forward: Panning the Camera Back
We must stop trying to track every single user. The future is probabilistic, not deterministic. We need to look at the big picture. This involves incrementality. We must ask what business we would have had if the ad did not exist. The gold standard is the geo holdout test. You blanket one city like Jacksonville with television and then stop. You compare the leads to similar cities. That is the proof that branding works. Marketing is like a boxing match today. You cannot just set it and forget it. You must keep playing and having fun while iterating your product.
Jagged with Jasravee, the Marketing Show 
Leave a comment