Almost three quarters ( 73%) of ROI on European marketing spend goes unmeasured despite 88% of procurement professionals in organisations that do measure ROI saying it can precisely calculate the business impact of marketing activity. More than half of those surveyed ( 55%) reported a pattern of marketing departments being disappointed with the commercial results of new platforms.

The consequences is each of Europe’s biggest organisations are allowing €124 million of their individual marketing budgets to go unmeasured by procurement.

Despite an often fraught relationship between marketing and procurement 65% of European procurement professionals report that this disconnection no longer exists. Indeed, 61% conceded that marketing teams are very helpful in measuring the impact of marketing initiatives. Stronger relations between marketing and procurement, alongside increasingly sophisticated technology has meant almost two thirds ( 64%) of European organisations that do measure marketing ROI, do so accurately and confidently.

And according to the procurement professionals interviewed, the days of not being able to measure marketing are long gone: nine in 10 ( 88%) claim they can precisely calculate the business impact of activity under each marketing channel. The study also found there are significant costs associated with lack of investment in measurement. Those channels that have been attracting the most widespread investment from European companies in the past year, such as social media and online display advertising carry the greatest risk in terms of ROI, with nearly half of procurement professionals ( 46%) referring to social media as an ‘over-hyped’ platform. 

The results are based on in-depth research among 200 of Europe’s largest 500 companies by turnover carried out in May 2014. The full report can be found here.

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