Attribution, Measurement Top Concerns for Mobile Marketers

It's tough to deny the important role mobile devices play in modern marketing, but that doesn't make it any easier to manage.

A new report from Marchex and Digiday shows that mobile is closing the gap between digital exposure and real-world sales. Companies, according to the "State of the Industry: How Mobile is Changing Marketing" report, are now focusing their advertising efforts on in-store purchases or phone calls, but are unable to align ad exposure to sales.

Respondents are more likely to call mobile advertising measurement and attribution (the ability to tie mobile ad exposures to sales) "very challenging" or "challenging" (56 percent) as opposed to scale (39 percent) or transparency (37 percent).

"As mobile advertising budgets continue to grow, we're seeing brands and agencies demand more accountability," said Pete Christothoulou, CEO of Marchex. "These results confirm that effective measurement and attribution of mobile advertising is a major challenge, and we anticipate growing demand for analytics solutions that can connect mobile behavior to real-world, offline actions."