How to turn marketing measurement into a growth lever – lessons from Waitrose

This seems a relatable scenario for many marketers – increasing complexity, pressure to demonstrate business value and continued scepticism and doubt that measurement is not robust or trustworthy enough. The reality is that few brands are set up to realize that promise. Research led by BCG shows that 76% of advertisers across EMEA are still in the early stages of measurement maturity and 68% who have run tests and experiments haven’t actually used those insights.

The shift from new tools to new framing

Proving impact and building credibility – especially to finance – became the first mission for Waitrose. It was struggling with the volume of tools, dashboards, analyses and conflicting data available but, as Darbon says: “What really allowed us to make progress was not the volume of charts but finding the right ones to resonate with our finance/C-suite. It took us a long time to build the consistency and trust to land the message.”

This challenge is consistent with the BCG findings, which showed that only 18% of marketers are consistently engaging with both the C-suite and finance to actively use effectiveness insights for decision-making; highlighting why investments in effectiveness struggle to take off. As Joanna Stringer, partner at BCG, says: “If your finance team doesn't believe, your insights might as well be dust.”

For Waitrose, the biggest shift came not from new tools, but new framing. “We learnt that there isn't a single source of truth, but a suite of truths,” he says. “The value came from triangulating different sources to land on a number we could act on. We stopped focusing on digital attribution models and worked towards being able to frame the measurement in the context of business challenges like: ‘It will cost us £X to reach 10,000 incremental target customers a year.’ That’s what unlocked a true strategic conversation with finance around budgets.”

And while the brand started with small incrementality trials and built on the sophistication and understanding from there, over time the team built its measurement muscle, layering attribution modelling, geo-testing, media mix modeling (MMM) and customer surveys to build a more complete picture of incrementality. “We were focused on solving business questions rather than a singular, rigid measurement strategy. The flexibility enabled us to more easily navigate privacy and technical changes that would have forced us to rethink our strategy,” says Darbon.

Introducing the Effectiveness Maturity framework

Now, the new BCG Effectiveness Maturity Framework is helping to bring clarity to what good looks like, with the building blocks for marketers to know where to start. It’s a single, practical structure – not a one-size-fits-all model, but a maturity path from basic to advanced capabilities.

“Everyone’s talking about measurement tools,” says Dimi Mitev, product lead at Google. “But there was no single, consistent point of view on how it all fits together. Where do I begin? What should you do first? What’s more important? And how do you get from good performance data to actual business impact?”

The same challenges appear across small to mid-size advertisers who don’t have huge internal measurement teams. That was the starting point for BCG to conduct in-depth research across the industry – interviewing more than 50 experts from the main platforms and agencies, and surveying over 3,000 advertisers globally.

“BCG has brought together all elements so you don’t need to meander on your journey and reinvent the wheel,” says Mitev. The resulting framework defines eight critical components of Effectiveness Measurement including established tools like MMM, attribution and incrementality testing, as well as softer but essential elements like stakeholder alignment, KPI clarity and having a structured learning agenda.

Google is working with select clients to pilot a self-assessment tool built on the framework offering a way to assess progress and unlock next-step priorities – without jumping ahead to advanced tools before the basics are in place. It benchmarks advertisers’ capabilities across four areas and provides a maturity score to help guide strategic focus.

“Since Google published the Trifecta of Modern Measurement in 2017, we’ve been proponents of triangulation of insights; however we always felt that in practice we had to add ‘bolt ons’ when working with clients – extra pieces to activate these tools,” says Mitev. “The BCG framework not only surfaced but coherently brought together these extra elements in a seamless way – effectively creating the first evolution of the Trifecta since 2017. That’s why we’re really excited to be piloting it with our advertisers to help them advance the impact of their measurement work.”

A smarter path forward

Seven years on, Waitrose’s approach to measurement is no longer about defending value – but directing it. “Robust results are just the start,” says Darbon. “What matters is how the business uses them. Once you’ve seen all the numbers over years – the evidence is overwhelming.”

What helped Waitrose was a measurement framework that:

• Puts learning and experimentation at the core

• Resets how marketing efforts are measured, with buy-in across functions

• Applies fit-for-purpose methodologies

• Commits to a long-term, holistic progression of capabilities.

Measurement maturity isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters, in the right order, with the right people behind it. And when done well? It becomes more than a dashboard. It becomes a growth lever.

As Mitev puts it: “The goal isn’t to impress with complexity – it’s to generate decisions that drive impact. True media effectiveness depends on all elements of the framework. For UK marketers, that means resisting the temptation to skip ahead to the latest tools, and instead focusing on the building blocks that make measurement meaningful.”