The Marketing Measurement Round Up: Edition #41

Welcome to another edition of In The Loop: The Marketing Measurement Round Up ??

What you can expect from this newsletter: As a marketer, you know that measurement is essential to success. But with so many different metrics, data points and tools to choose from, it can be difficult to know where to start. That's where In The Loop comes in. Each week, we'll deliver the latest marketing measurement trends and best practices to help you measure your marketing effectiveness and improve ROI.

From our perspective

Marketers are putting too much faith in Google Ads' conversion tracking and its automated bidding system to allocate budget to high-performing campaigns and keywords based on online conversion data, like form fills.

Why this approach falls short:

If you’re tracking things like form fills, only a fraction of those leads might actually become sales-qualified.?

For e-commerce, the value of purchases driven by different keywords and campaigns can vary a lot.?

Since Google Ads doesn’t see the quality of your leads or the real value of your sales, it can’t fully optimise for what matters most—driving the leads and sales that actually impact your bottom line.?

This can mean missed opportunities, lower-quality leads, and underwhelming campaign results

Second, not all sales or leads happen online—think in-store purchases, phone sales, or leads gathered at events.?

These are crucial parts of the customer journey, but because they happen outside your website, they often get left out of the data mix.?

You can import offline conversions using CSV uploads and hidden form fields to track click IDs, but let’s face it—that process is clunky, prone to errors, and misses other important touchpoints.

Without factoring in offline signals, ad platforms like Google Ads don’t have the full story, meaning their algorithms can’t properly optimise your campaigns.?

You’re essentially leaving money on the table.

(We’re dropping a playbook soon on how to automatically send offline conversion data to platforms like Google Ads—watch this space.)

The latest in marketing measurement

1. Key event recommendations in Google Analytics

Google Analytics has rolled out two new streamlined recommendations to help you track your key events:?

The Mark as Key Event recommendation lets you identify an existing event on your property and mark it as key with a single click, while the Create Key Event option allows you to create a new event from a specific page view and automatically mark it as key—all in one step.?

Tracking these key events unlocks automated insights, detailed reports, and helps you optimise your Google Ads campaigns.?

You can find these recommendations in the Home page, Insights hub, and Reports snapshot.

Our thoughts?

These new recommendations in GA are designed to improve tracking, but overloading your reports with too many key events—especially ones that aren’t important—can actually be distracting.?

While it offers helpful recommendations, Google Analytics doesn’t really understand the specifics of your business or website since every one is unique.?

What marketers really need is to see how key actions, like leads, actually tie into revenue. The problem is, Google Analytics works with aggregated data and user IDs, not personal info, so making that connection isn’t possible.?

2. LinkedIn reveals data-backed formula for B2B ad success

LinkedIn has dropped some new creative principles to help B2B marketers elevate their ads. According to their research, 90% of CMOs are backing bold, innovative campaigns, marking a big shift in B2B marketing. They've summed up their insights to help marketers get inspired.

1. Context matters: Tailor ads to the platform and audience mood.

2. Catch their eye: Bold visuals and vertical formats boost engagement.

3. Be memorable: Stand out, don’t just blend in.

4. Stay consistent: Unified branding increases profits.

5. Get emotional: Humor and shared experiences drive engagement.

6. Offer value first: Give before you ask—bold stances earn respect.

Our thoughts

These principles are great for creating ads, but what about measuring and maintaining them? Creating the perfect ad is only half the battle. If you’re not tracking how these ads impact revenue or bring in new business, you won’t know if the strategy is working. The tricky part is that LinkedIn ads can hit different stages of the funnel. Retargeting at the bottom is easier to track, but top-of-funnel? That’s a whole other story—people might see an ad and convert much later.

Tracking is getting tougher with privacy regulations and the complex customer journey. While LinkedIn has improved its attribution tools, it still doesn’t fully capture all the touchpoints in a customer’s path. Moving into 2025, marketers need to embrace measurement strategies that fit different channels and campaigns, such as MTA, MMM and incrementality testing.

Content we think you'll benefit from

Google CTR stats – changes report for Q3 2024

A new report from Advanced Web Ranking shows science topics climbing in Google searches, while commercial content is losing steam.

How does attribution modelling work on TikTok?

Explore TikTok attribution modelling, how it works, and the potential limitations in its accuracy.

Performance Max vs. Search campaigns: New data reveals substantial search term overlap

Brad Geddes from Adalysis explains how Performance Max (PMax) and Search campaigns interact, covering search term overlap, performance, and tips for optimising your account.

Just for fun

This week's lesson: If you're not utilising offline conversion data in ad platforms, you're not maximising your budgets ?