MER is a Road to Ruin

As a former agency owner, I know first-hand the importance of measuring marketing performance accurately. In the world of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) marketing, the gurus you follow on Twitter will tell you that the Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER) is the overriding measure of success. However if you blindly follow their advice, you’re going to run into …

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Is Less Really More? The Art and Science of Experimenting with Channel Cuts

Airbnb famously turned off their paid media and argued it turned out to be a successful decision. But was it? While Airbnb’s decision to turn off paid media may have resulted in some cost savings, it’s important to consider the potential long-term effects on its customer acquisition and brand equity.  It’s not the only time …

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The incrementality test that got my boss’s boss fired

Early on in my career, I learned a valuable lesson in incrementality that I’ll never forget. Ever since I had this experience, I carefully avoided making the mistake of trusting an advertising platform’s reporting without independently verifying the sales they claim wouldn’t have happened anyway. Hopefully you can learn from this example, and avoid it …

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Vanity metrics vs actionable metrics: Quantifying quality

Any metric that doesn’t have a strong causal link with sales outcomes is a vanity metric. For example while Clickthrough Rate (CTR) is often correlated with conversions (you can’t convert unless you’ve clicked on an ad), there are scenarios where ads with lower CTRs actually have better Conversion Rates (CVR). This makes CTR a vanity …

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Why “Brand Effects” are so difficult to measure in MMM

Many people want to know what the long-term effects of their marketing are. The theory is that advertising today may boost brand awareness which might have long-term positive impacts for the business. Often, they want to know how Recast thinks about these long-term impacts. Unfortunately, we believe that it is practically impossible for an econometric …

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Marketing Mix Modelling for Scenario Planning

Scenario planning or demand forecasting decides everything an enterprise does.  Right from quantities of raw material sourced to the inventory that needs to be stocked, through to shipping, packaging, hiring, and all the way down to purchasing office supplies  — everything is dependent on accurate forecasting and scenario planning. Forecasting errors can send ripples flowing …

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You’re losing more traffic to ad blockers than you probably realize

As the use of ad blockers continues to grow, ad buyers are losing visibility on the effectiveness of their marketing spend. What happens if their rise in popularity continues at the same rate and if they keep getting integrated into mainstream browsers, i.e. Safari ITP, Brave? In this article, we will explore the implications of …

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