India Inc. saw 3x increase in digital marketing spends over the last 5 years: BCG X Meta Report

BCG in collaboration with Meta, launched a report that brings together an industry consensus on optimal marketing measurement for marketing spends.

The report by BCG and Meta provides a comprehensive view of the best-in-class marketing measurement practices that can unlock exponential business growth for businesses, small and large.

For the purpose of this study, BCG and Meta collaborated with marketing measurement specialists including Adobe, Analytic Edge, AppsFlyer, Cartesian Consulting, Nielsen, and RainMan Consulting as well as 18 digital-first organizations from India across five key industries (Financial Services, EdTech, E-commerce, Travel, Media/OTT) to present this view.

The report findings highlight that there has been a 3x increase in the share of digital marketing spends over the last five years by India Inc.

However, despite its significant growth, the measurement practices have not kept pace. As a result, organizations are leaving significant value on the table.

“While the spends on digital marketing have skyrocketed, the true efficiency of the spend is not measured in most Indian companies. Thus, potentially leaving a lot of money on the table. As the customer journeys have become complex and intertwined between online-offline and across channels, the ability to measure the business impact of digital marketing has taken a hit.” said Shaveen Garg, Managing Director and Partner, BCG and. “Our study showed that while there were some companies have taken a lead and are getting exceptional returns, the vast majority are in early stages. There is no silver-bullet single answer to what to measure and how, but the core principle to follow is to capture the incremental impact on true business metrics.”

Also Read: Content For Community: Inside OnePlus’ feature film ‘2024’

Pratham Hegde, Director and Head of Measurement at Facebook India, said, “Digital is the new mainstream, and in order to unlock growth, there is a growing need for businesses to measure the true impact of marketing on business outcomes. The industry consensus is that there is no single measurement method or metric that will address all measurement requirements. The core recommendation for advertisers is to have an incrementality-based approach at the center of their measurement philosophy.”

“Organizations today need to make multiple marketing decisions – defining media mix, budget allocation, campaign optimizations… However, in a complex measurement ecosystem, with multiple stakeholders (app measurement, web analytics, platform-driven campaign performance reports…), with divergent recommendations, they often find it difficult to identify the right measurement approach.” Said Pallavi Malani, Managing Director and Partner, BCG “Our studies show that while leading global companies are significantly ahead on the measurement journeys (deploying Marketing mix models and statistical Multi-touch-attribution), most Indian organizations have just started their journeys towards measurement maturity – with encouraging, yet limited, pockets of measurement excellence, primarily in Financial services, eCommerce, Education technology and media.”