Marketing ROI in 2026: What Marketers Must Measure to Prove What Works Proving marketing ROI has never been harder. Platforms show numbers. …
Proving marketing ROI has never been harder. Platforms show numbers. Dashboards look busy. But when leadership asks, “What actually drove growth?” many teams still struggle to answer with confidence.
In a recent episode of The Eber Show, we spoke with Mike Lim, Managing Director of Insight Out, about what marketers must measure in 2026, and how to move beyond surface-level metrics to real business outcomes.
With over a decade of performance marketing experience across Singapore and Malaysia, Mike shared practical insights on attribution, funnel metrics, and why most ROI reporting today is still broken.
One of the clearest shifts Mike highlighted is how performance marketing has replaced traditional media planning mindsets.
Traditional media planning focuses on:
Performance marketing prioritises:
Post-COVID, this shift accelerated. Brands no longer care how cheap clicks are if they do not translate into growth.
Platforms tend to over-attribute conversions to themselves. A single conversion can be counted multiple times across channels, inflating performance and distorting ROI.
Cross-channel attribution remains unsolved across the industry.
Mike recommends returning to fundamentals:
Attribution is not about perfection. It is about consistency and traceability.
Platform data is convenient but incomplete. When marketers cannot explain sudden drops or spikes in performance, it is often because they are looking at platform-reported numbers without independent validation.
Marketers should question data when:
Strong leadership questions drive better measurement frameworks.
At the top of the funnel, conversions are the wrong goal.
Focus instead on:
Awareness works when people remember you later.
Here, intent begins to form.
Track:
Expect 2 to 3 touchpoints before conversion. Education matters more than pressure.
This is where performance marketing earns its keep.
Key metrics include:
Reducing friction often outperforms aggressive discounting.
Mike does not believe in generic industry benchmarks.
CPCs and CPMs vary wildly by:
US benchmarks rarely apply to Southeast Asia.
Instead, marketers should rely on:
Improvement over time is more meaningful than comparison with others.
To make reliable decisions, campaigns must reach a meaningful sample size.
Mike’s guideline:
Testing should run long enough and spend enough to generate insight. Learning speed matters more than short-term efficiency.
Retention-driven brands win when measurement supports long-term growth, not vanity metrics.
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