Over the past two decades—as digital has become the primary medium for lead generation and customer engagement—brands have increasingly adopted new measurement methods to track the effectiveness of their marketing programs. Some of these methods, such as multitouch attribution models that track ad exposures and user interactions at an individual level, have helped usher in an era of experience personalization. Customers now expect brands to provide relevant, intuitive engagement at every touch point.

Moreover, marketing teams are increasingly expected to contribute to business growth by leveraging the right media channels at the right time to drive customer conversion and increase revenue. Making smarter decisions and faster adjustments requires leaders to execute effective measurement and optimization in the moments that matter.

However, recent changes at the device, browser, and regulatory levels have diminished both the volume and availability of third-party customer and media performance data that helps marketers activate, measure, and improve performance. At the same time, marketing science teams are increasingly focused on factoring both online and offline media into measurement models to improve attribution capabilities.

To gauge the current state of advertising performance measurement during this time of transformation, Deloitte Digital surveyed more than 800 marketing measurement leaders at U.S.-based marketing agencies and consumer businesses. According to the research, brands with the most advanced marketing measurement capabilities—dubbed “measurement front-runners”—are deepening customer engagement and loyalty, driving faster sales, and beating revenue goals for their businesses.