Marketing Accountability Standards Board

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Marketing Accountability Standards Board
Founded2007
Website www.themasb.org

The Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB), authorized by the Marketing Accountability Foundation, [1] is an independent, private sector, self-governing group of academics and practitioners that establishes marketing measurement and accountability standards intended for continuous improvement in financial performance, and for the guidance and education of users of performance and financial information. [2]

Contents

History

Establishment of the Board (i.e., MASB) was recommended by The Boardroom Project (2004–2007) [3] in response to growing demand for marketing accountability. [4]

The Boardroom Project found that marketing has been relegated to the “default” category (control costs) because it lacks metrics that reliably tie activities and costs to financial return. While issues surrounding metrics and accountability were not being ignored, practices were too narrowly focused, lacked integration, and were not predictably tied to financial return. The Boardroom Project considered that measurement standards are essential for efficient and effective functioning of a marketing-driven business because decisions about allocation of resources and assessment of results rely on credible, valid, transparent, and understandable information, and that consistent standards across industries and domains, developed by a transparent process, will be necessary to improve the situation.

As was true for manufacturing and product quality with the ISO and ANSI standards, and for accounting & financial reporting with the FASB & IASB, The Boardroom Project identified the need for an industry-level authority to establish standards and ensure their continuing relevancy. [5] They considered that the development of generally accepted common standards for measurement and measurement processes would enhance the credibility of the marketing profession, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing activities, guide continuous improvement, and enable marketing to move from discretionary business expense to board-level strategic investment.

Mission

The Mission of MASB is to “Establish marketing measurement and accountability standards across industry and domain for continuous improvement in financial performance and for the guidance and education of business decision makers and users of performance and financial information.” [2]

Role

MASB sets standards and processes for evaluating marketing measurement to ensure credibility, validity, transparency, and understanding. The Board does not endorse specific measures. Rather, it documents how measures stack up against the Marketing Metric Audit Protocol (MMAP). The intention is that the market will select specific measures based on these evaluations. The Board's Dynamic Marketing Metrics Catalogue is intended to be the primary vehicle for documentation and publication.

The Board also intends to demonstrate how to use ideal measures according to MMAP for specific marketing activities, such as TV, on-line advertising, or other specialized activities and areas. The Board also investigates practices underlying the development and management of ideal measures as well as practices utilized to create knowledge, determine causality, and apply the findings to process management for improved return. [2]

Projects

The work of the MASB is conducted on a project basis, including the overall categories of standards, research, and concepts. Selection of priorities is based on pervasiveness of the issue, alternative solutions, technical feasibility, and resources, as well as practical consequences, convergence possibilities, and cooperative opportunities. Projects on the agenda were recommended by its charter members, with feedback from C-Level interviews. [6] [7] (See these links for an up-to-date list of projects: completed, underway, and ready for industry feedback.)

Marketing Metric Audit Protocol (MMAP)

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The Marketing Metric Audit Protocol (MMAP) is a formal process for connecting marketing activities to the financial performance of the firm. [5]

The process includes the conceptual linking of marketing activities to intermediate marketing outcome metrics to cash flow drivers of the business, as well as the validation and causality characteristics of an ideal metric. Cash flow both short-term and over time is the ultimate metric to which all activities of a business enterprise, including marketing, should be causally linked through the validation of intermediate marketing measures; therefore the process of validating the intermediate outcome measures against short-term and long-term cash flow drivers is necessary to forecast and improve the return. [8]

MMAP Metric Profiles

MMAP Metric Profiles is a catalogue of marketing metrics documenting the psychometric properties of the measures and giving specific information about reliability, validity, range of use, sensitivity, particularly in terms of validity and sensitivity with respect to financial criteria. This is intended to remedy a situation where most commercial providers offer little detail about their measures, with most publicly available information focusing on integrated suites of products and services with little technical information.

The Metrics Catalogue is provided on the MASB website as metric providers undergo the audit and their offerings are profiled according to MMAP. [8]

Marketing Accountability Foundation

The Marketing Accountability Foundation (MAF) [1] is the independent, private sector, self-governing organization that oversees the activities of the Board. It provides oversight, administration and funding for its standards-setting Board (MASB) and its Advisory Council (MAC) and selects the MASB Directors and MAC Advisors. It is authorized by its constituency to establish and improve marketing measurement and accountability standards, educate constituents about those standards, and protect the independence and integrity of the standards-setting process. The Foundation is incorporated exclusively for charitable, educational, scientific, and literary purposes within the meaning of Section 501(c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Sources of funding include membership dues, projects, workshops, technical services, publications, and training, advisory and auditing services.

Membership

Membership is organization-based, and open to marketers, business schools, measurement (modeling and software) providers, media providers, media and advertising agencies, industry associations, and independent consultants. [5] [9]

Related Research Articles

In marketing, customer lifetime value, lifetime customer value (LCV), or life-time value (LTV) is a prognostication of the net profit contributed to the whole future relationship with a customer. The prediction model can have varying levels of sophistication and accuracy, ranging from a crude heuristic to the use of complex predictive analytics techniques.

In psychometrics, predictive validity is the extent to which a score on a scale or test predicts scores on some criterion measure.

The term "retention rate" is used in a variety of fields, including marketing, investing, education, in the workplace and in clinical trials. Maintaining retention in each of these fields often results in a positive outcome for the overall organization or school, or pharmacological study. In marketing, retention rate is used to count customers and track customer activity irrespective of the number of transactions made by each customer.

In business, operating margin—also known as operating income margin, operating profit margin, EBIT margin and return on sales (ROS)—is the ratio of operating income to net sales, usually expressed in percent.

Cost per mille (CPM), also called cost per thousand (CPT), is a commonly used measurement in advertising. It is the cost an advertiser pays for one thousand views or impressions of an advertisement. Radio, television, newspaper, magazine, out-of-home advertising, and online advertising can be purchased on the basis of exposing the ad to one thousand viewers or listeners. It is used in marketing as a benchmarking metric to calculate the relative cost of an advertising campaign or an ad message in a given medium.

Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals." Customers play an important role and are essential in keeping a product or service relevant; it is, therefore, in the best interest of the business to ensure customer satisfaction and build customer loyalty.

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According to IFABC Global Web Standards, a unique user (UU) is "An IP address plus a further identifier. The term "unique visitor" may be used instead of "unique user" but both terms have essentially the same meaning. Sites may use User Agent, Cookie and/or Registration ID." Note that where users are allocated IP addresses dynamically, this definition may overstate or understate the real number of individual users concerned.

Internal audit

Internal auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value to and improve an organization's operations. It may help an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control and governance processes. Internal auditing might achieve this goal by providing insight and recommendations based on analyses and assessments of data and business processes. With commitment to integrity and accountability, internal auditing provides value to governing bodies and senior management as an objective source of independent advice. Professionals called internal auditors are employed by organizations to perform the internal auditing activity.

Market share Relative market adoption

Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those units would have a 10 percent share in that market.

The brand development index or BDI quantifies how well a brand performs in a market, compared with its average performance among all markets. That is, it measures the relative sales strength of a brand within a specific market.

Copy testing is a specialized field of marketing research that determines an advertisement's effectiveness based on consumer responses, feedback, and behavior. Also known as pre-testing, it might address all media channels including television, print, radio, outdoor signage, internet, and social media.

Return on marketing investment (ROMI) is the contribution to profit attributable to marketing, divided by the marketing 'invested' or risked. ROMI is not like the other 'return-on-investment' (ROI) metrics because marketing is not the same kind of investment. Instead of money that is 'tied' up in plants and inventories, marketing funds are typically 'risked'. Marketing spending is typically expensed in the current period.

Sales effectiveness refers to the ability of a company's sales professionals to “win” at each stage of the customer's buying process, and ultimately earn the business on the right terms and in the right timeframe. Improving sales effectiveness is not just a sales function issue; it's a company issue, as it requires deep collaboration between sales and marketing to understand what is working and not working, and continuous improvement of the knowledge, messages, skills, and strategies that sales people apply as they work sales opportunities.

Marketing accountability is a term that signifies management with data that is understandable to the management of the enterprise. "Accountable Marketing" is another name that can be given to this process.

One of the indicators of the strength of a brand in the hearts and minds of customers, brand preference represents which brands are preferred under assumptions of equality in price and availability.

Marketing metric audit protocol

The marketing metric audit protocol (MMAP) is the Marketing Accountability Standards Board's formal process for connecting marketing activities to the financial performance of the firm.

Annual growth rate (AGR) is the change in the value of a measurement over the period of a year.

Willingness to recommend is a metric related to customer satisfaction. When a customer is satisfied with a product, he or she might recommend it to friends, relatives and colleagues. This willingness to recommend can be a powerful marketing advantage. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 57 percent responded that they found the "willingness to recommend" metric very useful.

Cost per order, also called cost per purchase, is the cost of internet advertising divided by the number of orders. Cost per order, along with cost per impression and cost per click, is the starting point for assessing the effectiveness of a company's internet advertising and can be used for comparison across advertising media and vehicles and as an indicator of the profitability of a firm's internet marketing.

References

  1. 1 2 MASB. Marketing Accountability Foundation (MAF). [cited 8 December 2010]
  2. 1 2 3 MASB Mission. Archived 2011-01-08 at the Wayback Machine [cited 8 December 2010]
  3. The Boardroom Project. Archived 2011-01-08 at the Wayback Machine [cited 8 December 2010]
  4. Gregory, James. "In Search of Brand Accountability." Branding Strategy Insider. 9 July 2010. [cited 19 January 2011]
  5. 1 2 3 Neff, Jack. "Mass of Metrics May Mean Marketers Know Less." Advertising Age. 20 September 2010. [cited 19 January 2011]
  6. Plummer and Blair. "C-Level Views on Marketing ROI." July 2008. [cited 8 June 2012]
  7. MASB. MASB Projects. [cited 8 December 2010]
  8. 1 2 MASB. MMAP. [cited 8 December 2010]
  9. MASB. MASB Founding and Charter Members. [cited 8 June 2012]