Only 15.9% of the 408 CMOs interviewed by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business said they could show quantitatively that social media impacted performance, while 34.8% said they have a good qualitative sense of the impact.

“Spending on social media has outpaced its measurement,” said Christine Moorman, a Duke University professor and director of the CMO survey. “As we enter the next chapter in the evolution of this emerging area of marketing, I predict that we will see more companies designing research to give them insights into what is and is not working.”

Moorman also expects CMOs to up their spend on measuring return on investment. “CMOs report they spend 3.5% of their budgets on measuring ROI,” she said. “This level will increase over time, as will the number of companies using experiments and sophisticated econometric models.”

Full survey results are available here.

• In other budget-related news today, Warc has reported a slight improvement in its Global Marketing Index for February, rising 0.1 points to 58, off the back of “rapidly improving trading conditions” in the Americas.