Measurement
Is our current approach to measurement really helping us grow? Spoiler: It’s not.
In today’s fast-moving, signal-saturated media landscape, marketers are armed with more data than ever, but that data rarely leads to clarity.
Structured into three chapters, this paper invites marketers to rethink what measurement means in an age where agility is more powerful than static dashboards. It covers key business markets in the region, including Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey, and South Africa.
Despite record investments in digital marketing ($741B in 2024)¹, measurement practices haven’t kept pace. As a result, many marketers remain trapped in a self-defeating cycle, risking significant losses by focusing on short-term attribution. Known as the “measurement paradox”, this phenomenon is stark: 35% of last-touch attributed spend drives zero incremental sales², and yet 60% of underperforming marketers continue to prioritize it³.
The challenge is to try to understand everything that’s going on, how consumers are behaving when it comes to media and non-media touchpoints and how to harness these evolutions. Synchronizing these different walled gardens is the key barrier to overcome.
These challenges are pretty common across organizations and the main hurdles to adopting better measurement methods are usually lack of resources, whether it’s technical expertise, tools, or budget, and sticking to old ways that prioritize convenience over accuracy. On top of that, there is often resistance to change and marketers tend to stick with familiar but outdated methods like last-click attribution, which just slows down progress.
The reality of consumer journeys: fluid, non-linear, and increasingly fragmented - renders funnel-based attribution models obsolete. Data from TikTok’s consumer survey shows that 93% of people search on video platforms before purchase⁴, yet many systems miss those top-of-funnel signals.
Measurement systems must now evolve to reflect a blurred media environment where brand and performance co-exist, not compete. Video content, especially short-form, offers brand lift, discovery, and conversion power; yet much of its impact is still attributed to other channels via flawed models.
TikTok doesn’t even call itself a social platform anymore… They’re positioning themselves as a search and an entertainment engine, and with an in-app experience you do not want to break. That’s something brands need to take into consideration when they’re creating their captions, when they’re creating their hashtags, when they’re creating the actual video content and voice content.
Marketers are contending with a perfect storm: exploding content formats, AI-generated media, regulatory upheavals, and rising organizational pressure. This chapter calls it “tech turbulence”, a state where fragmented measurement systems and performance tunnel vision leave marketers emotionally drained and strategically stuck.
Over 58% of marketers reported feeling overwhelmed, and many leaders admit to continuing with outdated tools simply because change feels intimidating⁵. And despite knowing the limitations of last-click models, many brands still default to them.
At one point in time, we were sold the dream of multi-touch, data-driven attribution - a system that could capture the entire customer journey and attribute every click, every view, and every dollar earned. The reality is, it’s just not practical - and if it does exist, it certainly doesn’t live up to what was promised a decade ago.
Relying purely on last-click attribution would be like shooting ourselves in the foot because we would prioritize only the channel that led to the sale. But there are so many touch points that happen before a sale that we need to take care of and be able to judge… it’s faster and gives comfort, but it does not necessarily represent the 100% truth of how customers are actually behaving.
To navigate this overload, marketers must embrace simplicity, not by reducing scope, but by aligning around shared business goals. This means shifting focus away from lower-funnel metrics and short-term attribution models, and towards a system that connects activity to more meaningful business outcomes.
Not all measurement is created equal and different platforms have different ways of measuring. It’s important to be clear about what you are trying to measure and transparent about how you got there.
Enter the GRO framework: a structured, adaptable model designed to prove, improve, and scale measurement systems aligned with real-world marketing complexity.
G is for Goals: Start by aligning internal and external teams with clear, business-driven objectives across the full funnel. As shown in the Sephora Türkiye case study, this alignment led to a +4.5% lift in ad recall, +9.2% in incremental sales, and a 40% boost in organic search.
R is for Readiness: Instead of chasing mythical perfection, assess your current measurement maturity and build from there. Pixery, a mobile video technology brand, evolved from limited MMP models to Marketing Mix Modeling—revealing that some channels performed up to 10x better than previously estimated.
O is for Optimization: Create systems that evolve over time. Careem’s incremental testing showed performance media could drive a 15.4% lift in first orders, helping them shape more strategic, always-on campaigns.
Industry leaders agree: the goal is not to find a one-size-fits-all solution but to build confidence through iteration.
The digital landscape changes very quickly, so we have to be able to quickly adjust our strategies, measures and measuring tactics, to vary our response to new platforms, technologies and consumer trends. You need to test and learn, and sometimes retest again until you have really good measurement results.
Utilizing AI-driven tools to predict customer behavior and optimize campaign performance is one factor in future-proofing measurement. New privacy regulations will continuously reshape how we measure effectiveness, so it’s becoming more important to invest in first party data, structure it correctly, and build measurement systems that can evolve with new technologies. Adapting to change and staying current with industry trends is crucial.
True marketing impact lives in the nuance, in incrementality, in attention, in the interplay between brand and performance. This paper’s core message is clear: the future of measurement isn’t about chasing precision - it’s about building for adaptability.
By embracing the GRO framework, marketers can finally break the “doom loop” of misguided optimization and build systems that deliver clarity, confidence, and commercial impact.
Ready to go deeper?
Read the full WARC x TikTok study. In it, you’ll find exclusive data, brand interviews, practical tools, and the GRO framework in full so you can start proving, improving, and growing with confidence!
Sources:
1. WARC, Global Ad Spend Outlook, Nov 2024.
2. ANALYTIC PARTNERS, Genome Project, 2023
3. PROPHET, Brand & Demand, Marketing’s Great Love Story, Dec 2024
4. Source: TikTok Marketing Science Middle East, Turkey + South Africa consumer survey, ‘Why Marketing needs a New Measurement Mindset’ 2025, conducted by WARC – February 2025
5. WARC, Marketers feeling overwhelmed and close to burnout, February 2025