“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker, 19th-century retail magnate
Wanamaker’s famous quote still haunts marketers more than a century later.
Today, retail and commerce brands are tasked with transforming marketing from a cost center into a growth engine, justifying every dollar spent.
But without a clear picture of what’s working (and what isn’t), many brands are stuck making educated guesses instead of confident decisions.
In this post, we’ll explore the common attribution and measurement challenges marketers face, the key to proving real marketing impact, and how the right adtech partner can help.
The Measurement and Attribution Challenges Holding Marketers Back
Despite significant advances in adtech, many marketers still struggle to prove impact, especially in performance channels. Here’s why:
1. Signal Loss From Privacy Changes
As privacy regulations and the role of cookies evolve, Marketers have lost visibility into large swaths of customer behavior. Traditional tracking methods simply don’t work the way they used to.
2. Over-Reliance on Last-Click and Vanity Metrics
Many marketers still default to last-click attribution or focus on engagement metrics (clicks, impressions, likes, etc.) that don’t reflect real business outcomes. This leads to misguided optimization and missed conversion opportunities.
3. Online/Offline Disconnect
Most attribution models stop at the digital doorstep. But when customers make purchases in-store or through call centers, those conversions go untracked, leaving marketers blind to the full impact of their efforts on sales outcomes.
Without reliable measurement, marketers risk overinvesting in underperforming tactics or cutting spending from high-impact programs. The cost? A wasted budget, stalled growth, and lost revenue.
The Hallmarks of Reliable Marketing Measurement
If you’re trying to prove real marketing impact, here’s what to prioritize.
Incremental Impact = Real Growth
Focus on revenue lift, new customer acquisition, and retention—not just engagement or activity.
Outcome-Based Metrics Over Activity-Based Metrics
Your true north should be KPIs like iROAS, lifetime value, and net new customer revenue, not clicks or impressions.
Attribution That Reflects the Full Journey
A reliable model accounts for online and offline behaviors across multiple touchpoints, so you can see what’s working and what isn’t.
4 Signs Your Adtech Partner Measures What Matters
Here are the measurement and attribution capabilities that separate good adtech partners from great ones.
1. Ability to Measure Incrementality, Not Just Topline
Many platforms tell you what happened. Few can isolate their contribution. Look for partners that:
- Automatically build control groups into every campaign
- Deliver statistically significant learnings with no extra effort on your end
- Show actual lift in sales and customer acquisition, not just engagement upticks
2. A Holistic View of the Full Customer Journey
Attribution shouldn’t end at the click. You deserve a partner who can:
- Connect media exposure to purchases, regardless of whether they happen in-store or online
- Offer visibility across touchpoints and channels, including offline actions
3. Robust Identity Resolution
With the evolution of cookies and platforms locking down data, the ability to stitch together a customer journey is critical. The right partner will have:
- Deterministic identity graphs (IP, email, postal address, etc.) to connect exposure to conversion across environments
- Strong identity resolution to restore attribution accuracy in a privacy-first world
4. Action-Oriented Recommendations
Measurement is only useful if it drives smarter decisions. The best partners:
- Go beyond reporting to surface clear, data-backed insights so you understand where to invest more, what to adjust, and where to pull back
- Combine attribution with ongoing optimization support and strategic guidance
How PebblePost Helps Marketers Prove Real Impact
At PebblePost, incrementality is at the heart of everything we do. We give marketers the tools they need to clearly and unambiguously defend performance to their stakeholders, connecting real-world conversions to granular channel strategies, with unmatched transparency and accuracy.
Here’s how we do it:
Always-On Incrementality and Control Groups
Every campaign automatically includes hold-out control groups, allowing you to showcase the actual impact of your marketing efforts—down to the campaign, audience, and creative levels—with transparent, statistically significant results.
Full-Funnel Attribution Across Touchpoints
We tie transactions back to media exposure across online and offline channels using direct integrations and secure file transfers to your CRM or ecommerce platform. This gives you a real-time view of iROAS and sales lift.
Market-Leading Identity Resolution
Our Performance Marketing Engine connects IP, email, postal address, and other high-quality identifiers at the household level to link exposure to real online and in-store transactions. Our market-leading 80% identity match rate between your site and the PebblePost Graph (4x higher than competitors) gives you a more holistic and accurate view of attribution than traditional 1:1 address matching.
Insights That Drive Better Decisions
Our Analytics & Insights team delivers ongoing support, including decile analysis and performance projections, to help optimize every dollar. You get clear guidance on what’s working, what to test next, and where to invest more.
Real-Time Reporting Dashboard
Our real-time dashboard offers a fully transparent and filterable view of topline and incremental data, so you can easily prove the tangible impact of your marketing efforts. We also integrate with leading measurement platforms to help you validate your results against other marketing efforts.
If you’re tasked with proving marketing performance, guessing isn’t good enough. Reach out to see why leading retail and commerce brands partner with PebblePost to drive measurable, incremental outcomes at scale.
