Ad tech is killing the online experience, but those heady mobile ad days are soon to be over (thanks, Apple, or something). So, where does that leave marketers, we seekers of eyeballs and souls? 

Well, as one venture capitalist once told me when he declined to fund our messaging app not too long ago, “it’s all about email.” 

There are literally (yes, literally!) millions of publications that can “connect you directly to [insert key customer segment here].” 

But do they actually work? Here’s how to tell: create your own cost per lead benchmark by which to compare all others. Go ahead, play God.

Note: To do this you need a marketing automation system (e.g., Eloqua, Marketo, whatever you use). Don’t have one? Get one. Here, we go: 1)    Create a unique url for the landing page you want an ad to point to. 2)    Run the ad across a few of the most promising channels you choose (at HelloWallet we use Workforce and HR Executive, for example). 3)    Tally the number of new leads coming into your marketing system for each channel. 4)    Divide that by the cost to run the ad to get your cost per lead. 5)    Use this as the benchmark to assess all future opportunities. Here’s the trick: once you’ve done this, you don’t even really have to pay to test whether an opportunity is worthy of your dollar bills. Just ask the salesperson for the total number of the very best contacts for your product in their list, multiply by their click through rate and then divide by total cost for the ad. Compare this number to your best performing test to know whether to invest.