The customer journey is complex, with consumers interacting across 20+ channels and exposed to 4,000-10,000 ads daily before making a purchase. This fragmented landscape challenges advertisers to effectively measure impact across touch points to understand: How do marketing efforts across all stages of the customer journey contribute to overall business outcomes?
With high stakes in a competitive economic climate, brands that can reliably and accurately understand both the immediate and long-term impacts of their advertising efforts have the advantage.
But capturing this advantage demands moving beyond simple metrics to measure the outcomes and lasting impact across the consumer journey. And as traditional identifiers become less reliable, advertisers increasingly depend on partners with rich data signals and advanced technical capabilities. These partnerships can identify causal relationships, estimate advertising outcomes and gain a clear, comprehensive understanding of advertising impact – across all levels of the funnel and all channels of sales, online and offline.
Full-funnel measurement: understanding the customer journey
While conventional methodologies have served us well, they struggle to capture the full complexity of modern consumer journeys. Advertisers need new measurement strategies that offer more comprehensive insights, leading to better campaign optimization, more precise resource allocation and more impactful customer experiences throughout the purchase journey.
To unlock this potential of full-funnel measurement, the industry must explore new approaches that integrate data across touch points, measure long-term effects and reinforce nuanced marketing interactions with causal measures. Here are three of those emerging approaches:
- Vertical funnel analysis: from impressions to conversions
Vertical funnel measurement expands the scope of analysis beyond surface-level metrics. While traditional methods might focus solely on impressions, clicks and conversions, this approach delves deeper, examining the progression from searches to brand engagements and ultimately to conversions and advocacy. By measuring across upper-, middle- and lower-funnel activities, advertisers gain a comprehensive full-funnel view of the customer journey. - Omnichannel measurement: the all-seeing eye
Omnichannel measurement serves as a dynamic radar, tracking ad impact across online and in-store interactions. Effective implementation requires integrating with third parties and using complicated attribution logic to avoid overstating results. However, when done well, omnichannel measurement can significantly improve understanding of marketing effectiveness and support better decision-making. - Longitudinal closed-loop measurement: the retail media advantage
An evolution of full-funnel measurement is quantitatively connecting the dots across the entire spectrum of customer interactions, from initial brand interest to final purchase and beyond. This longitudinal closed-loop system, pioneered by retail media networks like Amazon Ads, relies on large volumes of first-party signals and advanced measurement analysis to identify the most impactful paths, attribute credit based on causal influence and estimate long-term impact.
Key techniques in full-funnel measurement
Effectively implementing these three new approaches requires a combination of proven techniques that provide a comprehensive view of advertising effectiveness across the full funnel. Below are a few of these useful techniques for measuring the effectiveness of full-funnel media. Employing a mix of these capabilities will help drive lasting, long-term business outcomes.
- Multi-touch attribution: As privacy regulations reshape advertising, legacy MTA products that relied exclusively on device IDs and rule-based attribution are becoming obsolete. Multi-touch attribution (MTA) models attribute credit to different ads along the path to a conversion. Advanced MTA models leverage billions of signals, machine learning and randomized controlled trials to establish true causal relationships with consumer actions.
- Conversion paths: MTA tells us what advertising touch points are having an impact, but conversion paths reveal how they’re creating that impact. By visualizing the sequence of touch points that lead to conversions, we can identify the most effective paths and incorporate that into budget allocation and planning.
- Long-term sales (LTS): Estimating long-term outcomes over extended periods provides a more representative view of advertising impact on brand growth. Understanding what ad products influence short-term and long-term sales helps brands derive more balanced media strategies and plans.
- Marketing mix modeling (MMM): The industry is also experiencing a resurgence in marketing mix modeling (MMM). In 2024, 83% of agencies and 58% of brands plan to invest in MMMs. MMMs use aggregate historical time-series data across geographies to quantify the holistic incremental sales impact and ROI of both marketing and non-marketing activities, taking into account factors that impact sales beyond media. Since MMMs do not rely on device identifiers, they are a privacy-compliant source for cross-device and cross-media measurement.
Embracing full-funnel measurement: What’s next?
The power of full-funnel measurement lies in leveraging the right signals and data-driven insights to inform actionable strategies. Robust full-funnel measurement relies on the ability to measure the contributions of different touch points, derive lasting impact and base outcomes on causal signals. Forward-thinking companies are taking steps that respect user privacy while responsibly utilizing data to drive results. By making pseudonymized and protected first-party signals as a cornerstone of this approach, organizations can now model and estimate total advertising outcomes with unparalleled precision and confidence.
As we move into this new era of measurement, the most successful advertisers will be those who can balance the need for detailed insights with a strong commitment to data privacy and responsible practices. By doing so, they’ll not only improve their marketing performance but also build stronger, more trusting relationships with their customers.
The future of full-funnel measurement is here, and the time for change is now: Advertisers who embrace full-funnel measurement will drive meaningful business outcomes and sustainable growth through deeper customer connections and elevated experiences.
