Nielsen releases its 2024 Annual Marketing Report surveying global marketers on ROI strategies

The sixth Annual Marketing Report explores how global marketers are allocating budgets and measuring success—all with an eye on proving and improving ROI

Nielsen, a global leader in audience measurement, data, and analytics, released its sixth global Annual Marketing Report, revealing marketers’ priorities and plans to improve ROI in 2024 and beyond.

The report, which surveyed nearly 2,000 global marketers, found that marketers continue to view social media, search, online/mobile video, and online/mobile display as the most effective marketing channels for ROI, but could miss out on key revenue opportunities without a cross-media strategy and approach.

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The 2024 Annual Marketing Report surveyed marketers on topics including budget allocations and spending optimism, brand building strategies, media balance, and overall confidence. Some of the key findings globally include:

1. Marketer spending optimism is up in 2024: Despite the presence of inflation, consumer spending, and supply chain uncertainties as key planning considerations, 72% of global marketers expect bigger ad budgets this year, up from 64% on a year-on-year basis.
   
   
2. Marketer tactics may not drive top KPI results: Marketers’ top KPIs are long-term ROI and full-funnel ROI. At the same time, however, 70% of respondents plan to prioritize performance marketing over brand building initiatives. A shift to performance marketing, without supporting brand-building marketing, could limit long-term ROI and may cause brand decay.
   
   
3. Digital media allocations are approaching two-thirds of spending: On average, global marketers plan to allocate more than 63% of their media spending to digital channels, with social media, search, online video and digital display accounting for the largest increases. A year ago, marketers split their traditional and digital spending 50:50.
   
   
4. Marketing technology confidence doesn’t match measurement realities: 84% of global marketers say they’re either extremely or very confident in their ROI measurement capabilities, up from 69% in 2023. Comparatively, only 38% say they evaluate the holistic ROI of their marketing efforts by measuring traditional and digital marketing together.

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“Marketers manage a diverse and growing number of channels – each with a unique set of activation needs and performance metrics. Nielsen’s Analytics Portfolio meets marketers where they are at – across channels and across objectives – to accurately measure and maximize returns across a complete marketing plan,” said Tina Wilson, EVP and Group GM, Analytics Portfolio Companies, Nielsen. “Our research reaffirms that effective measurement requires an integrated effort across media to understand brand and performance metrics in the short and long term.”

This is the sixth Annual Marketing Report produced by Nielsen. The report is based on survey responses in December 2023 from marketers who manage marketing budgets of $1 million or more, who work across a variety of industries (auto, financial services, FMCG, technology, health care, pharmaceuticals, travel, tourism, and retail), and whose focus pertains to media, technology, and measurement strategies.