Washington D.C. – Ever since Wanamaker uttered his succinct, if over-cited, quote about the challenge in correctly attributing the impact of advertising, many a pundit has spilled ink pontificating about the right way to measure returns. Marketing leaders  (and frequently, their finance counterparts) roller-coaster between gut-wrenching agony when a campaign doesn’t impact sales to sheer ebullience when finding a hit that drives dollars and creates buzz.

And, there is a constant refrain, uttered in the calm between campaigns: there has to be a better way to evaluate ad spend.

Fortunately, controlled experimentation (a.k.a “Test & Learn) is slowly, but surely, replacing traditional methods for measuring the effectiveness of ad spend (from Media Mix Analysis to the time-tested “gut-check” method of measurement). This evolution in measuring and improving advertising spend has been pushed in no small part by a number of emerging media channels, ranging from search advertising to mobile display ads on smartphones. These new channels more easily allow marketers to measure the impact of ad dollars spent and also opening eyes to the opportunity to measure traditional media (from TV to flyers) in a more robust way.

Our friends over at Google recently crafted a short video demonstrating how companies are using Test & Learn to measure the impact of online ads on brick and mortar sales to which we’ve linked, below.