Attribution

Find the latest and most impactful research on the measurement of marketing ROI and attribution here. All the research listed comes from the ARF or one of its subsidiaries: The Journal of Advertising Research (JAR), the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) or the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM). Feel free to bookmark this page, as it will be updated periodically.
What Buyers Expect from Retail Media Measurement

What Buyers Expect from Retail Media Measurement

  • ARF; The Advertising Club of New York

As retail media expands across onsite, offsite and in-store environments, buyers are looking beyond basic attribution to determine whether advertising is actually driving incremental sales. In a guest article for The Advertising Club of New York, Tracy Adams, PhD, ARF Senior Director of Research & Insights, examines findings from the second phase of the ARF Retail Media Network Standardization Project, revealing what advertisers and agencies say they need to make retail media measurement more comparable, transparent and trustworthy.

Member Only Access
Making Sense of Open-Source Marketing Mix Modeling

Making Sense of Open-Source Marketing Mix Modeling

  • ARF; MSI

As privacy changes make it harder for marketers to track individual customer journeys, media and marketing mix modeling (m/MMM) is experiencing renewed interest. Open-source tools from Meta, Google and the PyMC ecosystem promise to make these methods more accessible, particularly for organizations without the resources for customized proprietary models. In this MSI working paper, Julian Runge and Koen Pauwels evaluate the leading open-source approaches, examining their capabilities, differences and tradeoffs. Their analysis shows that while automation can democratize sophisticated marketing measurement, using these tools responsibly requires careful attention to model assumptions, diagnostics, calibration and validation.

Member Only Access
How AI Is Changing Omnichannel Campaign Optimization—and Measurement

How AI Is Changing Omnichannel Campaign Optimization—and Measurement

  • ARF
  • Cross-Platform Measurement Council — Attribution Working Group

AI-optimized, omnichannel campaigns are changing how media are planned, activated and measured. Drawing on in-depth interviews with advertisers and providers, the ARF Cross-Platform Measurement Council’s Attribution Working Group examined omnichannel campaign tools such as Google Performance Max and Meta Advantage+, exploring their potential to simplify execution, optimize across channels and improve performance. Their research also identified important tradeoffs, including transparency, testing capabilities and ongoing measurement and governance challenges.

Member Only Access
Beyond the Dashboard: Rethinking How Marketing Success Is Measured

Beyond the Dashboard: Rethinking How Marketing Success Is Measured

  • ARF; The Advertising Club of New York

Marketers have access to more data than ever before, yet many still struggle to answer the most important question: Did the marketing effort truly make a difference? And if so, how? Lots of metrics exist. So, is collecting more metrics the best approach to evaluating true impact? In this guest article for The Advertising Club of New York, ARF Senior Director of Research & Insights Tracy Adams argues that the future of measurement isn't about collecting more metrics—it's about integrating multiple approaches to build a more complete, decision-ready understanding of marketing impact.

Member Only Access
Bridging the Human-to-AI Identity Gap

Bridging the Human-to-AI Identity Gap

  • ARF COUNCIL REPORT
  • CROSS-PLATFORM MEASUREMENT COUNCIL

As generative search and agentic AI transform how consumers discover, evaluate and purchase products, traditional identity resolution and attribution systems are struggling to keep pace. This new paper by the Identity Resolution Working Group of the ARF Cross-Platform Measurement Council, introduces the concept of “Delegated Identity”—a framework designed to reconnect human intent with AI-driven actions in an increasingly AI-mediated marketplace. The report explores the emerging identity gap, evaluates industry readiness and outlines the challenges and opportunities facing marketers, identity providers and AI platforms.

Member Only Access
Scaling Causal Measurement: A New Path Beyond Attribution

Scaling Causal Measurement: A New Path Beyond Attribution

  • ARF; MSI

Randomized controlled trials remain the gold standard for measuring advertising effectiveness, but they are often too costly and complex to deploy across every campaign. This MSI Working Paper introduces Predicted Incrementality by Experimentation (PIE), a new framework that uses data from a limited set of experiments to predict causal advertising effects for campaigns that are not directly tested. The research demonstrates that PIE can dramatically outperform traditional attribution metrics, offering marketers a practical way to scale causal measurement without scaling experimentation itself.

Member Only Access
What Marketers Need to Know About Retail Media Measurement

What Marketers Need to Know About Retail Media Measurement

  • ARF ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Retail Media Networks (RMNs) have become a cornerstone of modern advertising, but measurement practices across networks remain inconsistent and difficult to compare. This new ARF study examines 16 major RMNs to uncover how advertising assets, attribution systems, incrementality testing and closed-loop measurement are actually implemented in practice. The findings reveal that while reporting dashboards may appear unified, the underlying measurement systems often rely on disparate sources of retailer data, platform reporting, modeling and privacy-safe integrations. The report offers practical guidance for advertisers evaluating retail media investments and highlights the growing need for industry-wide measurement transparency and standards.

Member Only Access
From Measurement to Decision Intelligence: The Future of Marketing Analytics

From Measurement to Decision Intelligence: The Future of Marketing Analytics

  • ARF Invited Paper by Jim Spaeth and Alice K. Sylvester

Marketing effectiveness analytics is undergoing a profound transformation. As marketers face growing complexity across channels, data sources and consumer journeys, artificial intelligence is accelerating the shift from retrospective measurement toward dynamic, decision-oriented systems. This paper examines a decade of innovation in marketing analytics, highlighting the rise of integrated measurement frameworks, experimentation, machine learning and emerging AI-powered modeling approaches that promise to reshape how organizations understand and optimize marketing performance.

Member Only Access
The Convergence of Content and Commerce: The Case of Shoppable Ads

The Convergence of Content and Commerce: The Case of Shoppable Ads

  • ARF
  • CROSS-PLATFORM MEASUREMENT COUNCIL

Shoppable advertising is reshaping the relationship between media and commerce, and measurement practices are still catching up. In this report, the ARF Cross-Platform Measurement Council’s Attribution Working Group examines how brands, platforms, retailers and publishers are defining, deploying and evaluating Shoppable Ads. Based on nine in-depth industry interviews, this report highlights growth trends, key use cases, measurement methods and challenges, and the path toward scalable, closed-loop attribution to Shoppable Ads.

Member Only Access
When Media Effects Multiply: Evidence of Cross-Funnel Synergies

When Media Effects Multiply: Evidence of Cross-Funnel Synergies

  • ARF
  • JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH

Media planning frameworks often assume that channels operate independently or compete within the same funnel stage. This research challenges that assumption by demonstrating that the largest performance gains come from cross-funnel synergies, particularly between upper-funnel television, middle-funnel digital media and lower-funnel promotions. Using a large-scale CPG dataset and a novel estimation–optimization approach, the study shows that explicitly modeling these interactions can materially improve media allocation decisions while also significantly increasing incremental revenue.

Member Only Access
 Next »