Why 42% of Marketers Can't Measure Cross-Channel ROI (And What Law Firms Should Do About It)

Here’s the number that should keep every legal marketing director up at night: 42%.

That’s the share of marketers who told StackAdapt they can’t measure ROI across channels. Not “don’t measure well.” Can’t measure. At all. And this isn’t a legal-specific survey. These are 484 marketing professionals across industries, many with budgets, data teams, and attribution platforms.

Law firms are worse off. CallRail’s 2025 data puts it bluntly: 42% of law firms don’t track marketing ROI in any structured way. Same number, different study, identical problem.

The Blind Spot That Costs Millions

A mid-size PI firm spends $40,000 per month on marketing. Google Ads takes $20,000. Broadcast gets $10,000. A little goes to SEO, maybe some display. Each vendor sends a report. Each report tells a different story.

Google says 400 leads came from search. The broadcast rep claims 200,000 households reached. The SEO agency points to organic traffic growth. But the firm signed 18 cases last month.

Which channel produced those 18 cases? Nobody knows. Not the firm. Not the vendors.

That’s the attribution gap. And it gets wider with every channel you add.

The problem isn’t that measurement tools don’t exist. Every DSP generates impression logs. Every call tracking platform records source data. Every CRM can tag intake by channel. The problem is that these systems don’t talk to each other. Data lives in silos, and nobody builds the bridge.

What Breaks When You Can’t Measure

Without cross-channel attribution, three things happen. All of them waste money.

You overspend on what’s easy to track. Google Ads gets more budget because it shows clear cost-per-lead numbers. That number is real, but it’s incomplete. It doesn’t account for the CTV ad that made the prospect aware of your firm three weeks before they searched. It doesn’t account for the display retargeting that reminded them yesterday. Google gets credit for the last click. Everything upstream gets nothing.

You underspend on what actually works. CTV, display, and audio build the awareness that makes search convert. Cut those “unmeasurable” channels and watch your Google Ads cost per click rise 20 to 30% within 90 days. The awareness layer was doing more work than anyone credited.

You can’t optimize. Without channel-level cost per signed case, every budget decision is a guess. Should you shift $5,000 from broadcast to CTV? You literally don’t know. The CFO asks for proof, and there isn’t any.

The Five Layers of Attribution

Cross-channel measurement isn’t one tool. It’s a stack. Each layer captures a different part of the journey from ad impression to signed case.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Take a firm spending $40,000 monthly across three channels in a mid-size DMA. Without attribution, here’s what they see.

Google Ads: $20,000 spend. 380 leads. $53 CPL (cost per lead).

CTV: $12,000 spend. Unknown leads. Unknown CPL.

Display: $8,000 spend. Unknown leads. Unknown CPL.

The firm knows Google works. CTV and display are faith-based.

Now add the attribution stack. Dynamic call tracking, CRM integration, and household matching. Same spend, same month.

The difference: 23 signed cases versus 18, because CTV and display were doing work that only showed up in the Google column. When you cut those channels without attribution data, you lose the awareness that made search efficient.

The Real Cost of Not Measuring

Let’s put a dollar figure on the gap.

A firm spending $480,000 annually on marketing without proper attribution typically wastes 25 to 35% of budget on the wrong channel mix. That’s $120,000 to $168,000 per year. Not wasted on bad channels. Wasted on the wrong allocation between channels that all work but need different investment levels.

The attribution stack costs under $500 per month. Call tracking at $100 to $200. CRM integration at zero (if your CRM supports custom fields). DSP pixels included in platform fees. The payback period is measured in weeks.

Compare that to the alternative. Every quarter, the managing partner asks where the cases come from. Every quarter, the marketing director points at Google because it’s the only channel with clean data. Every quarter, upper-funnel spend gets questioned. Every quarter, the budget conversation is a negotiation instead of a data review.

Why Gartner’s 33% Number Matters

Here’s where the problem compounds. Gartner’s 2023 survey found that marketers use only 33% of their martech stack’s capabilities. That means even firms that own the right tools aren’t using them.

The call tracking platform has a CRM integration that nobody turned on. The DSP generates household-level match reports that nobody downloads. The practice management system has a source field that intake coordinators skip because nobody trained them.

Attribution isn’t a software problem. It’s an operations problem. The technology exists. The configuration doesn’t. That’s why 42% of sophisticated marketers still can’t measure cross-channel ROI. The tools sit on the shelf.

What Good Attribution Actually Reveals

Firms with full-stack attribution discover patterns that change their entire strategy.

CTV drives branded search. In our tracked markets, firms running CTV campaigns see branded search volume increase 15 to 25% within 60 days. Those branded searches convert at 3 to 5x the rate of generic terms. CTV doesn’t replace search. It makes search cheaper.

Display retargeting closes the gap. Website visitors who see retargeting ads are 70% more likely to return and convert within 14 days. At $2 to $5 CPM, retargeting is the cheapest close in the funnel.

Audio fills dead zones. Commute-time audio ads generate awareness in time windows where no other channel reaches the audience. Call volume spikes 20 to 30 minutes after morning drive time in markets where firms run audio.

Broadcast waste is quantifiable. With household-level data, you can calculate exact waste percentages on broadcast buys. Most firms we work with find 75 to 85% of broadcast impressions hit non-target households. That $10 CPM becomes a $50 to $67 effective CPM for the audience you actually want.

None of these insights are available without cross-channel attribution. Every one of them changes budget allocation.

Building Your Attribution Stack This Quarter

You don’t need to boil the ocean. Start with the layers that generate immediate value and add sophistication over time.

Month one: call tracking. Set up CallRail or Marchex with dynamic number insertion for every active channel. Tag your Google Ads, CTV, display, and organic. This alone will show you which channels produce calls and which produce silence.

Month two: CRM integration. Connect your call tracking to Clio, Litify, or Filevine. Create a required “marketing source” field in your intake workflow. Train intake staff to capture it. When a lead becomes a signed case, the source tag follows.

Month three: pixel deployment. Deploy your DSP pixel site-wide. Configure conversion events for form submissions and phone call clicks. If you’re running CTV through a DSP like StackAdapt or The Trade Desk, enable household-level matching.

Month four: first attribution report. Pull 90 days of data. For the first time, you’ll see cost per signed case by channel. Not cost per lead. Not cost per click. The number that actually determines whether your advertising budget is working.

The 2026 Measurement Shift

StackAdapt’s data shows the tide is turning. The 42% who can’t measure know it’s a problem. They’re investing.

The report found a 4x increase in advertisers consolidating to fewer platforms specifically to solve measurement fragmentation. Fewer dashboards means fewer data silos. A single DSP that handles CTV, display, audio, and native generates unified reporting by default. The multi-vendor measurement nightmare goes away when the buying happens in one place.

For law firms, the path is clear. The firms that build attribution infrastructure in 2026 will make every budget decision with data. The firms that don’t will keep guessing. At $2.9 billion in total legal ad spend and climbing, the cost of guessing is too high to justify.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why can't most law firms measure cross-channel ROI?

Most law firms buy channels separately from different vendors. Google Ads data lives in one dashboard, CTV data in another, and intake data in the CRM. Without a unified attribution layer connecting these systems, there's no way to trace a signed case back through every touchpoint that influenced it.

What's the minimum attribution stack for a law firm?

At minimum: call tracking with dynamic number insertion (CallRail or Marchex), a website pixel tracking form submissions by source, and CRM intake tagging in Clio, Litify, or Filevine. This connects phone calls and web leads to specific channels. Add household-level CTV matching for full-funnel visibility.

How much does proper attribution setup cost?

Basic call tracking runs $50 to $200 per month per DMA. CRM integration costs nothing if your CRM supports custom fields. DSP pixel setup is included in platform fees. The total infrastructure cost is under $500 per month. The cost of not having it is unmeasurable waste across every channel.

References

1. StackAdapt. "2026 Digital Advertising Trends Report." 2026.
2. CallRail. "Law Firm Marketing Statistics and Trends." 2025.
3. Clio. "Legal Trends Report." 2025.
4. Nielsen. "Streaming Shatters Multiple Records in December 2025 with 47.5% of TV Viewing." 2026.
5. Marchex. "Call Attribution and Legal Advertising ROI Report." 2024.
6. Gartner. "Marketing Technology Survey: Marketers Utilize Only 33% of MarTech Stack." 2023.