The ROI Trap: How Marketing Metrics Can Mislead The C-Suite

Forbes

3 days ago

Srikanth Ramachandran is the Founder and Group CEO of Moving Walls Group, an adtech and enterprise SaaS leader for the OOH media industry.
Imagine walking through a retail district where every screen reacts to your presence, delivering messages tailored just for you.
That's the world Minority Report envisioned two decades ago. It felt futuristic then. Today, it's not far from reality as consumers seamlessly hop across physical and digital environments: see a brand on a digital billboard, check reviews on Instagram and finally purchase after a Google search.
The journey is far from linear. It's multi-touch, multi-screen and multi-moment. Yet, despite this evolution, I see our marketing measurement frameworks as stuck in the past.
We're Optimizing What's Measurable, Not What's Effective
Modern marketers are under immense pressure to prove performance. Understandably, most rely on metrics that are easy to track: clicks, impressions, views, conversions.
But these are often surface-level indicators. This has led to what I call the ROI trap, where attribution is disproportionately skewed to the last click or the final touchpoint. Channels like search, retargeting and programmatic display appear to outperform others not because they're more impactful, but because they're easier to measure.
Here's the reality: A consumer may have seen your brand five times: on a billboard, YouTube ad, podcast mention, influencer's story and finally a search result. The last one gets all the credit, doesn't it? But what about the brand lift? The emotional nudge? The decision-making groundwork that took place earlier? We're rewarding closers instead of recognizing the entire sales team.
I think marketing ROI today is broken, not because we lack data, but because we measure what's convenient instead of what's consequential.
The Old World: Predictable Planning, Coherent Strategy
For decades, media planning revolved around reach and frequency models. Marketers built annual plans and allocated budgets across TV, radio, print and outdoor based on marketing mix models (MMM). It wasn't perfect, but it worked. Audiences were easier to define, media was finite and stable, and ROI could be projected with relative confidence.
Today, those guardrails are gone. We've traded predictability for precision and lost perspective along the way.
The Modern Challenge: Fragmentation, Siloed Metrics And Misleading Signals
We now operate in an ecosystem dominated by platforms like TikTok, YouTube, CTV, Instagram, programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) and more. Each comes with its own performance dashboards: YouTube prioritizes watch time, TikTok counts views, our displays track click-through rates, and social media chases engagement.
Although each channel is optimized in isolation, the consumer moves fluidly across them all. This siloed optimization results in inefficiency, overlapping spend and ultimately, underperformance. Marketers are stuck chasing platform KPIs while missing the holistic journey that actually drives purchase behavior.
A Personal Turning Point: When The Screen Started Listening
A few years ago, I encountered a digital billboard that allowed me to change its content using my phone. It was simple but profound. That moment rewired how I saw advertising. If a screen can respond, it can track. If it can track, it can measure.
That realization formed the foundation of my media technology company. I think it's important to find ways to bridge the physical and digital media gap and allow brands to plan, automate and measure across every environment consumers touch.
Toward A Smarter ROI: Three Shifts That Matter
To evolve beyond vanity metrics, marketing leaders must embrace a new ROI model, one that reflects causality, journey orchestration and adaptability.
Don't ask "What ad drove the conversion?" Instead, seek: "What impact did the campaign create that wouldn't have happened otherwise?" Incrementality isolates true lift, helping marketers quantify what exposure really moved the needle.
Marketing is now a matter of choreography. Out-of-home creates awareness. Social drives validation. Search captures intent. Understanding the order in which consumers encounter messages is key to unlocking influence, with the moment of influence often more powerful than the medium itself. Therefore, look to prioritize message flow over channel focus.
AI is transforming media from a static buy to a dynamic design. By analyzing audience behavior in real time, AI can help recommend which message should follow which, where it should appear and how the creatives will convert. Historical planning still has a place, but this should take a back seat to real-time learning.
A New Formula For Marketing Success
Let's move beyond outdated ROI definitions. Instead of just dividing return by spend, consider a smarter equation where ROI equals incremental lift multiplied by optimal sequence and learning velocity. To operationalize this, business leaders need to connect data across all channels (digital and offline), break down internal media silos and link media goals to business outcomes (over vanity metrics).
The Future Of ROI: From Impressions To Intelligence
Every screen is now a performance medium, from smart TVs to digital billboards to checkout kiosks. But performance won't be unlocked through only impressions or cheaper clicks.
I think we need to stop asking "Which platform worked?" and start asking "What journey delivered value?" The future belongs to brands that can answer this question and orchestrate conversations across every moment, touchpoint and screen.
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