So why are millions spent on measurement and research

Still on the topic of measurement - I was recently in a class listening to ( with my "marketing with common sense" hat on) research experts talk about how they track, evaluate and measure advertising with complex models and tools that cost millions of dollars.

Now, the sticker price for this media analysis and measurement has always intrigued me, especially since the results often match the initial hypothesis. Makes me wonder - did you really need to spend all that money to get this answer? This question has come up before but no one ever did a good job responding to it - until this time around. And the answer put things in perspective.

This senior research executive who manages a multi million dollar research budget said - "Yes, in most cases the research may show you what you may have known intuitively. But what you are getting when you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more on research is - the ability to quantify that intuition. And when you are dealing with marketing budgets of hundreds of millions of dollar, saying its working isn’t enough. One needs to be able to quantify it.”

I see it as putting a layer of science on an art :)