Introducing Effective's Cost Per Minute of Brand Engagement Metric

Marketing performance reporting breaks down for one simple reason:

🛑 The data is everywhere, but the story is nowhere.

Paid media performance data now lives across closed platforms and omnichannel touchpoints, each with different metrics, attribution rules, and reporting logic. As investment spreads across digital, retail media, and in store channels, teams increasingly spend time reconciling numbers instead of driving optimization.

Industry research shows how widespread this challenge has become. A 2026 Dentsu and Path to Purchase Institute study found:

• 40% of CPG marketers cite accuracy concerns, cross channel complexity, and limited tools as the biggest barriers to measuring true incremental impact.

• Only 26% of in house marketers currently run incrementality testing internally

• One third admit they measure impact only at a basic level. This fragmentation makes it harder to understand what is actually driving growth and where to invest next.

That’s why the right reporting foundation matters, especially for brands focused on scaling efficiently. At Effective, this is how we approach performance reporting. We start with a reliable data foundation, then design dashboards around the business questions that actually drive growth, and elevate every report with clear observations, key insights, and recommended actions.

Rather than stopping at metrics like impressions, clicks, or CPMs, our reporting connects performance back to strategic objectives, highlights what is working and what is not, surfaces patterns across channels and creative, and outlines specific optimizations to improve results moving forward.

One of our food and beverage clients pushed us to critically evaluate the engagement of our media plan. Without an apples to apples comparison of engagement time and cost, we invented a new media metric: Cost Per Minute of Brand Engagement.

We used a proprietary approach to estimating engagement time by channel across CTV, video, social, display, audio and instore video. We were then able to divide cost by engagement time across all channels to see which channels drove the most efficient user engagement. Budget was strategically reallocated to prioritize formats driving the strongest consumer engagement and time spent with the brand. As a result, total media investment remained efficient while user engagement time rose to over 23MM actual minutes spent with brand content at an average cost of only $0.05 per engagement minute. In short, the optimization prioritized quality of exposure over quantity, concentrating dollars where users were most likely to watch, listen, and engage deeply with the brand’s message.

Effective ensures reporting is not just a snapshot of activity, but a decision making tool that continuously informs smarter media planning and buying.