Marketing has come a long way since the days of John Wanamaker and his famous complaint that he didn’t know which half of his marketing spend was useful and which wasn’t. However, as senior Forbes contributor George Bradt contends in his article, Wanamaker Was Wrong — The Vast Majority Of Advertising Is Wasted, attribution is extremely difficult to measure, and brands would be smarter to try to spot their most loyal customers, rather than try to figure out the exact steps that should be attributed to a purchase. Although there are plenty of tools available to collect purchasing behavior, piecing together a somewhat reliable path-to-purchase is not easy, and Bradt believes the money is better spent both finding loyal customers and providing those customers with a personalized experience they will learn to covet. Read