The Measuring Effectiveness Report gathered views from senior level marketers among the CMA membership, including both brands and agencies. 

The study found that 73% of respondents considered measurement to be very important to their content marketing strategy. Half of marketers currently spend 6-15% of their content marketing budget on this area, nearly half ( 45%) were planning to increase this in the coming year, and 56% already automatically offer measurement as part of their strategy.

However, only half of those surveyed believed it was possible to accurately measure content marketing’s ROI. Fifty two per cent doubted whether a universal metric was achievable.

In terms of specific measures, nearly all ( 91%) felt that content marketing effectiveness metrics could include long-term brand health measures like favourability/ likeability, trust, consideration and propensity to buy. Short-term measures thought to be important included interaction ( 24%) and actions like purchase ( 23%), length of engagement ( 20%) and social sharing ( 19%) were also mentioned. However, only 15% felt that ‘views’ were most important. 

"The overwhelming pattern that emerges from our survey of content marketers is that measurement is important, yet there is still a debate about what is worth measuring, and how companies should go about doing this," said Clare Hill, managing director of the CMA.