South Africa, Aug. 15 -- We are living in a paradox. Never has marketing had more tools, more data, and more reach. Yet never has the value of marketing been more questioned inside boardrooms.

A recent study by Google and Kantar called The Effectiveness Equation reveals that only 40% of senior marketing leaders believe their organisation has a clear goal for marketing effectiveness. Worse still, just 20% say there's a shared understanding across the business on how to measure it.

This misalignment represents a significant commercial risk: when CMOs can't prove the impact of their work, marketing budgets are often the first to be cut, throttling business growth before it can begin. Worse still, throttled marketing budgets can mean commod...