While marketing metrics has become a hot topic in the last several years, the most recent ANA survey indicated a number of worrisome declines. For example, in the 2006 survey, 28% of respondents said they could forecast the impact of a 10% reduction in marketing budget on sales, only 18% said this in this year's survey. Likewise, the percentage saying they used cross-functional teams from such departments as sales and finance declined from 45.3% in 2006 to 20.1% in 2007. And only 22% said they had "full cooperation and an open dialogue with finance" to establish metrics and methodologies for marketing ROI.

While there may be many causes, Nardone and See suggested the lack of a financial commitment to measurement was one factor. The most recent survey found that 57% of marketers invested less than 1% of their working marketing budget into accountability and that only about half (49%) even had a dedicated budget for accountability. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.