New Ebiquity and WFA research finds just 14% of organisations report alignment between marketing and finance on what advertising effectiveness means. CFOs want a clean profit-and-loss line. Marketers report on metrics. When the two sides define the goal differently, no amount of reporting settles the argument.
If finance and marketing cannot agree what a win looks like, every performance review is two people grading different exams and comparing marks.
New research from Ebiquity and the World Federation of Advertisers found that just 14% of organisations report their marketing and finance teams agree on what effectiveness in advertising actually means. The study surveyed 71 senior leaders across ten sectors and interviewed executives responsible for a combined A$58 billion in annual ad spend. The disconnect is close to universal.
The split is simple to describe and hard to fix. CFOs want media investment justified as a profit-and-loss line. Marketers evaluate the delivery of metrics. One side is asking whether the money made money. The other is reporting reach, engagement and awareness. They are not even arguing about the same question.
Why it matters
This is the root of the marketing budget fight in most businesses, and it is not really about the numbers. It is about the definition. When the two sides measure success differently, no report ever resolves the tension. Marketing shows strong metrics. Finance sees a cost it cannot tie to profit. Both feel right. Both are frustrated.
The research also found that fewer than 3% of marketers understand short-term versus long-term performance against brand impact, and 46% of companies sit at the lowest maturity levels for unified data. So the argument happens on top of fragmented numbers and a shaky grasp of what drives what. That is not a measurement gap. It is a shared-language gap.
The share of organisations where marketing and finance agree on what advertising effectiveness means (Ebiquity, WFA)
What to do about it
Agree the definition of effectiveness with finance before the next budget cycle. Settle what a win is, then measure it.
Report in the language of profit and loss. Marketers who frame results in commercial terms get heard. Ones who report reach get questioned.
Fix the data foundation first. You cannot align on effectiveness while both teams pull different numbers from different systems.
Separate short-term and long-term effects deliberately. A brand investment and a performance campaign are not the same job and should not share one scorecard.
Get marketing and finance in the same room, working the same numbers. The problem is not the metrics. It is that the two sides never defined the goal together.
The businesses that win this are not the ones with the fanciest measurement. They are the ones where marketing and finance sat down, agreed what effectiveness means and then held everything to that shared standard. Fourteen percent have done it. That is the gap, and it is also the opportunity.