Marketers plan to up spend on measurement for content but serious doubts remain

A new report from the Content Marketing Association on measuring effectiveness found that 73% of marketers considered measurement "very important" to their content strategies – with none regarding it as unimportant.

But only 50% said it was possible to accurately measure the ROI of content marketing, with 20% believing it was not possible. Meanwhile just 12% of respondents said they believed a universal metric was achievable, while 35% thought it was unachievable.

The survey also found that marketers are set to put their money where their mouth is by putting a greater proportion of their content budgets towards measurement. Just under half (45%) said they would be doing this over the next year, while only 11% said they definitely would not, with 44% unsure.

The survey also asked about the relationship between agencies and their clients when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of content marketing. On where the responsibility lies for measuring ROI, 61% said it should be the agency, with 39% pointing to the client.

There were widespread concerns in both directions about how seriously agencies and clients take measurement. For those saying the agency should be responsible for measuring ROI, 71% said that clients either did not or sometimes did not take measurement seriously enough.

For those saying it should be the client’s responsibility, this figure was even higher, with 77% believing the agency did not always take the issue seriously enough.

A number of factors were found to be barriers to measuring effectiveness, with the most commonly cited being access to data – an issue for 65% – followed by the lack of a single agreed system (57%), accuracy (46%), ineffective tools (45%) and time (43%).

Clare Hill, managing director of the CMA, said: "Measurement is central to the content marketing industry and this research proves how critical it is to senior marketers.

"It is great to see the industry joining together to address the key challenges, growing budgets to stay at the forefront of measurement and ROI."