Why Channel-Level Marketing Analysis Isn't Enough

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Cody Greco, CTO and cofounder at Prescient AI , loves working with great humans and building technology that saves them time and money.

Imagine trying to understand Manhattan's traffic patterns by monitoring individual streets in isolation. You might notice heavy congestion on Broadway and divert cars to 7th Avenue, only to create a new bottleneck because you didn't consider how these streets connect and influence each other.

This is exactly how many brands approach marketing analysis—examining each channel separately and making decisions that seem optimal in isolation but create inefficiencies across the marketing ecosystem.

This siloed approach to marketing measurement isn't just outdated—it's actively costing brands money. As privacy changes reshape digital advertising and economic pressures demand greater efficiency, the cost of fragmented analysis is becoming impossible to ignore.

The rise of channel-specific analysis wasn't arbitrary. As digital marketing evolved, each platform developed its own reporting tools. Facebook told you about Facebook campaign efficacy; Google told you about Google SEM efficacy. Platforms made money from selling advertising; they naturally had an interest in proving the value of their audience—and theirs alone.

This specialization makes sense when you consider the convenience for marketers—but consumers don't experience your marketing in neat, platform-specific silos. They might see your YouTube ad in the morning, encounter your Instagram post over lunch and convert through Google in the evening—possibly all on different devices. The platforms themselves are now deeply interconnected, with actions on one directly influencing the performance of others.

Multitouch attribution (MTA) was a step toward crossing the channel divide. Marketers knew customer journeys could hop from channel to channel, and tracking pixels helped facilitate that understanding. It wasn't perfect, but it was a step in helping brands understand their marketing channels and how customers interacted with them at a deeper level.