Webinar Recap: ROI for Financial Marketers: What to Measure (and What Not to Chase) in 2026

The cost of measuring the wrong things is growing. For financial marketers, that can mean budget going to channels that look efficient on paper, partner and publisher impact being undervalued, and AI-influenced discovery being missed in reporting.

To help marketers rethink how ROI should be measured in 2026, our CEO Nicky Senyard hosted a live discussion with:

• Adam Fontana, Head of Digital & Marketing Strategy, Vested
• Vito Zerilli, VP, Program Management, Axos Bank

The key takeaway: ROI can no longer be measured by volume, clicks, or last-touch attribution alone. Financial marketers need to connect visibility, influence, qualified volume, funding rates, customer quality, and blended CAC to real business growth.

Watch the full webinar here.

Why Measuring the Wrong Things Is Getting More Expensive

Financial marketers are under pressure to prove performance, but many teams still rely on metrics that don’t show the full picture.

From his experience across retail banking, marketing, and digital banking strategy, Vito shared an early lesson: campaigns can drive strong application volume without producing funded accounts. In other words, volume becomes a vanity metric if it doesn’t lead to real customer growth.

That means measurement needs to focus on business impact, including:

• Qualified applications
• Approval rates
• Funded accounts
• Customer quality
• Long-term value
• Blended customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Incremental lift

As Vito summarized, financial marketers need to “fall in love with funded outcomes,” not application counts. The goal is to prove profitable, durable growth, not just activity.

How AI Is Adding More Complexity to the Customer Journey

AI isn’t creating customer journey fragmentation on its own. As Adam noted, it’s accelerating a shift that was already happening across search, social, online communities, and other digital channels.

It adds another layer to the journey by creating more places for consumers to:

• Research financial products
• Validate options
• Compare brands

Adam’s point was that AI hasn’t changed the fundamentals as much as it has added another layer of influence, often without a clear click or attribution path. Nicky framed it similarly: AI is another channel, but one that can’t be measured with outdated models.

A consumer may discover a brand in an AI answer, validate it on Reddit or a publisher site, compare options through search, and convert later through a direct or branded visit. That is why attribution now needs to capture more than the final click.

The Rise of the Validation Stage

Adam noted that the customer journey now includes a stronger validation layer. Consumers aren’t just discovering and comparing financial products. They’re looking for proof from trusted third parties, online communities, publishers, and sources that large language models may reference.

Reddit is one example. Consumers use these spaces to ask real questions, get candid feedback, and validate decisions before converting. As AI search platforms increasingly present this content, brand reputation and third-party presence become more closely tied to performance. For financial marketers, that means visibility across paid, earned, owned, publisher, and community environments matters more than ever.

Teams need to understand:

• Where their brand is being discussed
• How their brand is being represented
• Which sources are influencing AI visibility
• Whether those touchpoints are contributing to downstream performance

Why Funded Outcomes Matter More Than Volume

For financial brands, not all leads are equal. Vito emphasized that high application volume means little if those applications don’t become approved and funded accounts, especially when reporting results to finance teams, CFOs, or boards.

Vito recommended mapping the full journey:

• Impression to application
• Application to approval
• Approval to funded account
• Funded account to long-term customer value

This full-funnel view helps show whether marketing is driving long-term customer value and gives teams a clearer way to compare partner and channel quality. One partner may drive more volume, while another may deliver fewer applications but stronger approval rates, higher funding rates, or larger-balance customers.

The stronger ROI story is not “we generated more leads.” It is “we generated better customers.”

How to Report Marketing ROI to CFOs and Boards

One of the recurring themes in the discussion was that marketing needs to be positioned as an investment, not an expense.

Adam traced this back to his early career in accounting, where he often heard CFOs question marketing spend. That experience shaped his view that marketing teams need to show how their work supports business growth because, as he put it, investments get funded and expenses get cut.

For board and CFO conversations, Adam recommended tying marketing performance to the annual plan and the milestones leadership is already tracking. Vito added that boards need to see the “chain of profitability,” from impression to application, approval, funded account, and long-term customer value.

When reporting to leadership, marketers should focus on:

• How marketing supports the annual growth plan
• How spend connects to qualified volume and funded accounts
• How approval and funding rates differ by channel or partner
• How CAC compares to customer quality and lifetime value
• How campaigns contribute to incremental lift
• How performance is being monitored and optimized over time

Vito also noted that when acquisition costs appear high, marketers need to explain the quality behind the number. A higher CAC may be justified if the campaign is bringing in larger-balance, longer-term, or more profitable customers.

How to Measure Partner and Publisher Impact Beyond Last Click

Partner and publisher impact is often undervalued when teams rely too heavily on last-click attribution. As Nicky noted, in an AI-influenced journey, publishers do more than drive direct conversions. They also shape visibility, trust, and validation before a user converts elsewhere.

To measure partner impact more clearly, financial marketers should:

• Tag partner activity consistently
• Track applications, approvals, and funded accounts by partner
• Compare partner performance by quality, not only volume
• Review approval and funding rates by source
• Evaluate publisher impact on visibility and validation
• Use partner scorecards to identify where to invest, optimize, or pause

For financial brands, the goal is not just more partner activity. It is better partner performance.

How AI Is Changing What Marketing Teams Need to Measure

AI search and zero-click discovery are changing which signals matter. Adam noted that clicks may decline even as visibility and content value increase, so teams need to educate stakeholders on newer indicators such as organic impression share, branded and non-branded visibility, and where LLMs surface content. Nicky added that no-click discovery can still reflect strong intent, with users often returning later through another channel to convert.

Financial marketers should begin monitoring:

• Organic impression share
• Branded and non-branded visibility
• Referral traffic from LLMs
• Publisher and community mentions
• Share of voice across AI-influenced channels
• Funded outcomes from influenced traffic
• Sentiment and authority signals

The key point is that clicks still matter, but they no longer tell the full story.

How to Educate Leadership on New Measurement Realities

The challenge isn’t just measurement, it’s internal education. Leadership teams are used to clicks, rankings, last-touch attribution, and direct conversion metrics, but AI-influenced discovery does not always fit those models.

As Nicky emphasized, marketers are not working in a silo. Boards, CFOs, business leaders, compliance, and product teams all need to understand how customer behavior is changing.

A practical approach:

• Show where the customer journey is fragmenting
• Explain why clicks may decline while influence grows
• Connect visibility metrics to funded outcomes
• Use testing to prove incrementality where possible
• Tie marketing performance to the annual plan
• Bring key stakeholders into the conversation early

The goal is to help leadership understand what traditional reporting may now miss.

What Financial Marketers Can Improve in the Next 30 Days

The panelists offered several practical steps marketers can take quickly to improve ROI measurement.

1. Tag everything consistently

Vito’s first recommendation was simple: tag everything.

If tagging is inconsistent, every downstream report becomes harder to trust. Marketers should prioritize tracking partner name, applications, approvals, and funded accounts so they can calculate blended CPA and compare performance more accurately.

2. Build a partner scorecard

Vito recommended building a simple partner scorecard to understand where performance is strongest and why. This helps teams identify whether performance is being driven by audience fit, pricing, offer strength, product alignment, or another factor.

A useful partner scorecard might include:

• Application volume
• Approval rate
• Funding rate
• Cost per funded account
• Customer quality indicators
• Incremental lift

3. Have an honest conversation with finance

Vito encouraged marketers to ask finance what they would need to see to support a budget increase.

This helps marketing teams avoid reporting in a silo and ensure performance narratives align with what finance actually needs to make investment decisions.

4. Run an incrementality test

Adam emphasized that incrementality testing helps show what is truly moving the needle. It does not need to be complex: a simple holdout test, where a small audience segment is excluded from a campaign as a control group, can help prove whether a channel, partner, or campaign is creating incremental value.

Vito suggested starting with a high-spend partner or channel and carving out a small test group to build more credible evidence for future budget conversations.

5. Reserve budget for testing

Nicky noted that many clients keep a portion of budget available for net-new testing alongside always-on foundational campaigns. This gives marketing teams room to adapt as channels evolve, test new partners, and identify future growth opportunities without disrupting core acquisition activity.

Conclusion

Marketing ROI is getting harder to measure, but the path forward is becoming clearer. Financial marketers need to move beyond vanity metrics and build reporting that connects influence to funded growth.

Focus on three priorities:

1. Clean up measurement foundations: Audit tagging, track applications through funded accounts, and build partner scorecards.
2. Align internally: Work with finance, compliance, and business leaders on shared success metrics.
3. Measure influence, not just clicks: Track AI visibility, publisher impact, share of voice, customer quality, and incrementality alongside revenue.

The brands that adapt now will be better positioned to defend spend, optimize performance, and show how marketing contributes to growth in 2026 and beyond.