Marketers embrace streaming but struggle with cross-media measurement

The great majority of marketers around the world are now including streaming platforms in their media planning, but far fewer view these as effective advertising channels.

That’s according to the 2023 Annual Marketing Report from measurement company Nielsen. It found that while 84% of nearly 2,000 global marketers surveyed have embraced the use of OTT and CTV platforms, just 49% are sure of their effectiveness.

Why it matters

It all comes down to measurement: just 53% of marketers in the survey were confident in full-funnel measurement, while 69% agreed that digital media and audience fragmentation amid the rise of streaming poses significant challenges to reach their target audiences. There’s an urgent need for accurate, comparable and representative cross-media measurement across devices and platforms.

Takeaways 

• Globally, 71% of marketers say that comparability in cross-media measurement is important. Yet cross-media ROI measurement remains elusive for many, with CTV ad measurement presenting notable challenges.
• Marketers report only mild degrees of effectiveness across channels, with perceived effectiveness lowest for podcasts, CTV, streaming audio and native advertising. However, these four channels are also among those that marketers plan to invest in most over the coming year, with planned increases ranging from 38% to 42%.
• Despite expected increased ad budgets, 24% of global marketers, on average, plan to reduce their investment in martech to some degree, with 12% planning cuts of 150% or more.
• Heading into 2023, most brands were already under-spending – by a median of 50% – to achieve their maximum ROI. Reducing spending by even more could suppress ROI even further, and negatively impact marketers' top objectives for the year ahead: customer acquisition, closely followed by brand awareness.

Key quote

“True cross-media measurement requires transformative thinking that puts the audience ahead of a growing assortment of tools and solutions that measure at the channel level” – Jamie Moldafsky, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Nielsen.

Sourced from Nielsen