Only a tenth of marketers claim to be ‘very successful’ at measuring the impact of brand marketing, according to new data.
Marketing Week’s 2025 Language of Effectiveness research, in partnership with Kantar and Google, finds 11.1% of the more than 1,000 brand marketers surveyed believe their company can “comprehensively demonstrate” the impact of brand and its overall business contribution.
Over a quarter of the sample say they are ‘quite successful’ at proving the effectiveness of brand marketing and have a ‘reasonably good picture’ of most of its effects and financial contribution.
Only a tenth of marketers claim to be ‘very successful’ at measuring the impact of brand marketing, according to new data.
Marketing Week’s 2025 Language of Effectiveness research, in partnership with Kantar and Google, finds 11.1% of the more than 1,000 brand marketers surveyed believe their company can “comprehensively demonstrate” the impact of brand and its overall business contribution.
Over a quarter of the sample say they are ‘quite successful’ at proving the effectiveness of brand marketing and have a ‘reasonably good picture’ of most of its effects and financial contribution.
However, two-fifths (39.3%) of respondents admit they are only ‘average’ at measuring the effectiveness of brand and can quantify some of its effects, but the picture is incomplete.
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Around a fifth (14.8%) of the Language of Effectiveness sample report being ‘quite unsuccessful’ at measuring the impact of brand and have ‘difficulty’ quantifying its effects or contribution to the business. A further 6.9% admit to being ‘very unsuccessful’ in their efforts to prove brand marketing effectiveness and are ‘generally unable to quantify its effects’.
Only 10.6% of CMOs and marketing directors claim their business can comprehensively demonstrate the business contribution of brand marketing. Over a fifth (22%) claim their team has a ‘reasonably good picture’ of the impact of brand, while almost double that number (42.4%) say they can quantify only ‘some’ effects and would class their efforts as average.
A further 17.4% of CMOs say their business has difficulty quantifying the commercial contribution of brand, while 7.6% deem their efforts ‘very unsuccessful’.
A question of confidence?
According to the research, B2B marketers are less confident in their abilities to comprehensively measure the effectiveness of brand compared to their B2C peers.
While just 9.7% of consumer marketers claim to be ‘very successful’ at quantifying the commercial contribution of brand, this number halves to 5.2% for B2B marketers.
Just over a quarter of both B2B (25.8%) and B2C (26.2%) marketers claim to have a ‘quite successful’ grasp of brand impact. However, consumer marketers (43.7%) are more likely to claim to have an average understanding of brand effectiveness, versus their B2B peers (38.1%).
Over a fifth (21.6%) of B2B marketers say they have difficulty quantifying the impact of brand, while a tenth (9.3%) admit they are generally unable to quantify its effects.
By comparison, 14.6% of B2C marketers admit to being ‘quite unsuccessful’ at measuring brand marketing effectiveness, with a further 5.8% deeming their efforts at quantifying brand ‘very unsuccessful’.
Interestingly, greater disparities appear when cutting the data by size of business.
Marketers in large companies (businesses with 250 employees and over) are twice more likely (13.9%) than their SME peers (5.3%) to deem their efforts at quantifying the commercial impact of brand ‘very successful’. Those in larger firms are also more likely (29.4% large organisation versus 25.2% small business) to report a ‘reasonably good picture’ of the effectiveness of brand.
Almost half (45.8%) of SME marketers describe their efforts to measure the impact of brand as ‘average’ – leading to an incomplete picture – versus over a third (36.3%) of their peers in bigger businesses.
Nearly a fifth (18.3%) of marketers in smaller firms report having trouble quantifying the business contribution of brand, while a further 5.3% admit to generally being unable to do so.
Some 12.7% of marketers in large corporates say they are ‘quite unsuccessful’ at measuring the impact of brand, although they are more likely than their SME peers (7.8%) to admit being generally unable to quantify its effects.
Whether these findings speak to a skills gap, lack of confidence or limited access to the necessary data, the fact so few marketers deem their efforts to quantify the impact of brand successful can only harm their case when it comes to securing future investment.
Marketing Week will continue its reporting from the Language of Effectiveness research in the coming weeks. Click here to download our report on the data.
