Peter Naylor

Advanced measurement is moving from a “nice to have” to a requirement for brands that want to prove how marketing drives real business outcomes.✅ Nowhere is this more visible than in Retail Media Networks. RMNs like Instacart give brands access to closed-loop performance data tied to actual purchases. That data is powerful, but it also raises an important question for marketing leaders: How do we validate results beyond platform-reported metrics and understand true incremental impact? This is why third-party measurement is becoming a critical part of the RMN conversation. Circana has emerged as a leading independent measurement partner for retail media performance, including Instacart. By combining retailer point-of-sale data with broader market and category intelligence, Circana helps brands understand not just what sold, but what actually changed because of advertising. https://lnkd.in/gp4CghWf For food and beverage brands, this matters because RMN performance rarely exists in isolation. Retail media influences household penetration, repeat rates, brand switching, and category growth, not just attributed sales within a single platform. Third-party measurement helps separate signal from noise by providing a consistent view across retailers, channels, and time. The broader industry trend is clear. As RMN budgets grow, marketers are being asked to answer harder questions around incrementality, brand impact, and long-term growth. Platform dashboards alone are no longer enough. At Effective, we see advanced media performance reporting as a layered system. Platform data shows what happened. Third-party measurement helps explain why it happened and whether it was truly incremental. Together, they create a clearer connection between media investment and business results. This is how performance reporting evolves from tracking activity to proving impact. Jeff O'Shaughnessy Joelle Kaplan #MarketingMeasurement #RetailMedia #MediaPerformance #Incrementality #F&B #MarketingEffectiveness

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As brands and agencies brace for economic volatility, proactive steps are essential for ensuring media investments remain effective. From scenario planning and prioritizing transparency to competitive intelligence, it’s vital to prepare for varying economic conditions. Historical insights show that brands maintaining advertising spending fare better and recover faster. Marketing leaders must keep tone sensitivity in mind as consumers become more deliberate about spending. Adaptation is key. #MarketingStrategy #EconomicUncertainty #Advertising #BrandGrowth #MediaInvestments #Leadership #ScenarioPlanning

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Audio represents 20%+ of consumer media time but under 5% of ad spend (eMarketer). For pharma brands focused on reach, frequency, and trust, this unlocks smarter investment without sacrificing accountability. "Viant Technology’s direct integration with iHeartMedia... allows both companies to match their data graphs and create shared IDs for targeting audiences in digital audio, as well as broadcast radio, where audience ID signals are scarce." Net-net: we're making hard to measure channels measurable and heping healthcare marketers better understand who they’re reaching, how often, and how audio fits into the full patient and HCP journey. Audio has always driven impact. Now, with Viant, it drives insight too. #HealthcareMarketing #PharmaMarketing #Viant #Programmatic #AddressableAdvertising #MeasurableMedia #AudioAds https://lnkd.in/ek8J-iJE

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Happy to help our partners at Amazon with this measurement initiative. Proof that real purchase data, not modeled proxies, is what closes the gap between streaming exposure and verified sales outcomes.

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I got quoted in Skai 2026 State of Retail Media report this week - this one is all about measurement. According to Skai, only 15% of brands say they're highly effective at measuring retail media performance. From all my conversations... that sounds about right. But the tools are out there, and the agencies to support you are out there (hint... we do this extremely well). It's not because the tools or the knowledge don't exist. It's not because the methodology is too complex. It's not even a data access problem. The real barrier? People and ownership. 56% said they lack internal analytics or data science resources. Nearly 1 in 5 said there's no clear cross-functional ownership between sales, media, and analytics. In my opinion lack of analytics access is the excuse. Lack of ownership is the problem. I stand by that. Here's what I see constantly with brands: the retail media budget grows, the channel count grows, the retailer portals multiply and the analytics infrastructure stays exactly the same. We keep pouring spending into the machine and then wonder why we can't explain what it's doing. And the incrementality gap is brutal. 75% of brands say incrementality measurement is their #1 challenge. But only 20% are actually good at both measuring AND applying those insights to decisions. Everyone knows it's the north star. Almost no one has operationalized it. The aspirations vs. reality data were the most telling part of the whole report. Brands hope incrementality will unlock profit margin improvements (68% said so). Only 24% have actually achieved that. That gap isn't a measurement problem. It's an organizational design problem. If you're a Head of #eCommerce staring down a budget conversation right now, here's the honest takeaway: You don't need another dashboard. You need to invest in this and give authority to someone who owns #incrementality end to end, standardize definitions your media, finance, and analytics teams all agree on, and a decision cadence that actually changes what you do next. As always, I'm here to help. DM me with any questions.

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Impression-level AI is powerful only if the data inputs are clean and the incentives are aligned. Moving intelligence upstream doesn’t eliminate opacity by default. If agentic systems are making micro-decisions in milliseconds, transparency and governance become even more critical especially as AI-driven optimization increasingly determines pricing, prioritization, and access. There’s also a structural implication. When optimization lives at the impression layer, differentiation shifts from bulk inventory to signal quality and predictive modeling. The competitive edge is who can predict value most accurately at the micro level.

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By using AI to interpret real-time content signals, advertisers can now align messaging with where users are in the buying journey. The result? Fewer wasted impressions, stronger engagement and better ROI 📈 Seedtag’s latest blog unpacks how intent based marketing bridges privacy & performance by predicting readiness through real-time content analysis - no tracking required. https://lnkd.in/e8fzMCiC #AdTech #ContextualAdvertising #AIIntentionModels #AttentionToIntention

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Jennifer Kattula, could not agree more -> "Generative AI is transforming marketing and how brands engage with their audiences. As much as I love AI, robots will not replace human taste, craft, curation, or nuance" What a wonderful conversation with Kristin Reagan from Annalect. Highly recommend this read.

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For years, digital advertising has claimed to be “contextual,” but most solutions have relied on keywords, not a true understanding. That approach overlooks nuance, culture, and emotion, particularly in non-English-speaking markets. AI is finally changing that. By reading meaning, tone, and context, AI-powered tools allow brands to engage audiences with relevance and respect, not just data points. This is how we move from talking at people to speaking with them and why OOH and premium media can lead the way in human-centered advertising.

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Super excited to announce this expanded partnership between Instacart and The Trade Desk!  Instacart is the first U.S. retail media network to integrate its grocery selection with The Trade Desk platform for streamlined self-service use cases, enabling approved advertisers and agencies to build first-party custom audiences based on specific product criteria for programmatic campaigns. CPG brands can also access real-time sales measurement signals from Instacart directly in The Trade Desk platform. Here we go! https://lnkd.in/eygGcAJr

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Great post from Nate Carter: "Marketers are demanding to know how data is sourced, how it’s validated and whether it’s grounded in real-world signals rather than anonymous digital exhaust. Data providers that can clearly document their inputs and processes will rise in influence; those that can’t will fade into the background noise of the open web." #datamarketing, #b2bdata, #digitaladvertising, #AI

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CMOs demand guaranteed delivery, lowest CPMs, strategic flexibility, and outcome-based pricing. Physics says you can't have all four simultaneously. Principal media delivers three of them. The question is which three matter most. Forrester's new principal media report from the inimitable Jay Pattisall is very much worth a read, and it's going to trigger the predictable debate. Critics will argue agencies are creating conflicts. Evangelists will tout cost savings. Both will miss the strategic reality: CMOs facing compression don't have the luxury of perfect markets. I've watched boards push CMOs for guaranteed outcomes while slashing budgets. In that environment, academic arguments about strategic flexibility mean nothing. The anti-principal media argument assumes unlimited client patience, perfect information, and rational markets. Reality looks different. Reality is: your board wants cost certainty so they can model P&L without media volatility. Reality is: your CFO wants guaranteed delivery so you're not scrambling for Super Bowl inventory in scatter markets. Reality is: your CEO wants outcome-based pricing that ties media spend to business results. Principal media trades strategic flexibility for the three things boards actually care about: cost certainty, delivery guarantee, and outcome alignment. The Forrester report shows 80% of marketers are interested in principal media advantages. That's not because CMOs are naive about conflicts of interest. It's because they're making rational trade-offs under real constraints. The criticism of principal media comes from people who've never faced the impossible triangle. They can afford to optimize for strategic flexibility because they're not accountable for the P&L impact when media costs spike or inventory disappears. Yes, principal media requires transparency. Yes, it needs contractual controls and performance accountability. Yes, clients should cap how much spend flows through principal arrangements. But the mechanism itself? It's agencies finally building inventory positions that enable the outcome-based pricing we've demanded for years. I'm a big supporter as, for two decades, I've watched CMOs demand that agencies move from billing hours to pricing on outcomes. "Put skin in the game," they said. "Share the risk." Now agencies are doing exactly that with principal media, and the industry is calling it a conflict of interest. We can't have it both ways. Forrester predicts principal media will grow to one-third of billings by 2026. Read their report, then decide which three variables matter most for your business. https://lnkd.in/eKHg5qmk #PrincipalMedia #MediaBuying #CMO #MarketingLeadership #MarketingStrategy

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EDO will integrate its online search and activity outcomes data with VideoAmp, Kantar Media and DoubleVerify's Scibids in addition to Nielsen. https://lnkd.in/eTa7KAay

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Until recently, channels like Roku, Paramount, Pandora, or iHeartMedia were reserved for enterprise-scale advertisers with advanced programmatic infrastructures. For emerging and mid-sized CPGs, these platforms were too complex, too fragmented, or too expensive to navigate. Some recent announcements from Kroger Precision Marketing have changed that. Service-Led Activation Model: KPM provides a managed-service approach - handling all the technical complexity of programmatic buying on behalf of the brand. This removes the barrier of entry for brands lacking in-house programmatic expertise. Data-Powered Precision: Campaigns are entirely fueled by Kroger’s massive first-party data set (over 60 million households), ensuring that ads on CTV or audio platforms are precisely targeted to verified, high-value shoppers. Closed-Loop Accountability: KPM is not just selling reach; it’s selling a measurable outcome. The managed service is tied directly to Kroger’s sales data, allowing brands to prove that an ad seen on a streaming platform led directly to a product purchase in a physical or digital store. #RetailMedia #CommerceMedia #CPGMarketing #AdTech #KrogerPrecisionMarketing #ConnectedTV

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Great perspective from Matt Wasserlauf. As AI continues to scale media buying, transparency becomes even more critical. The more automated the ecosystem gets, the more marketers need confidence in where media runs, how audiences are defined, and whether impressions are actually reaching real people. That’s exactly why Blockboard, which combines AI with blockchain verifiable delivery, has set the standard for the next chapter of digital advertising. Blockboard verifies by default.

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CMOs Are More Focused On Growing Revenue Than Brand Awareness https://lnkd.in/g8jyVmuY Chief marketing officers are increasingly prioritizing direct revenue outcomes over traditional brand awareness efforts, influenced by economic pressures, performance measurement demands, and AI‑enabled tracking. This shift reflects a need for more measurable impact on business performance, with revenue growth becoming a leading strategic metric for modern marketing leaders. #CMOInsights #RevenueGrowth #MarketingStrategy #BrandVsPerformance #BusinessImpact #DataDrivenMarketing

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The future of TV measurement is here! As the industry gears up for the Upfronts, Nielsen's transition from its legacy panel data to the new Big Data + Panel product is set to be a game-changer. This shift is poised to redefine how we understand audience insights and drive media decisions. For those wanting a deeper dive into what this means, AdAge has an excellent breakdown. Check it out! #TVMeasurement #BigData #MediaInsights #Upfronts2025

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✅🖥️ AdExchanger (9/23): “The new product goes further by plugging into The Trade Desk’s AI-based Kokai ad platform to create a live feedback loop between the UID2 IDs targeted by TTD and results collected by Acxiom. It matches audience impressions to online and offline sales from Acxiom’s consumer data. One way to think of the new flavor of Acxiom’s tie-up with The Trade Desk is as a reflection of other similar incrementality and AI ad products offered by walled gardens. Amazon, for example, has a similar product with Acxiom although it’s specific to Amazon’s empire. The product was built on AWS for Amazon’s media, uses the Amazon DSP and sits within Amazon Marketing Cloud, which is the ad business’s data clean room. With True Intelligence, advertisers can “hit the open internet, inclusive of CTV, to give the ability to measure holistically,” adding that the product is built on Snowflake, which is a neutral platform. The idea of targeting incremental new customers with an AI-based ad platform is also akin to what Google and Amazon have done with Performance Max and Performance Plus, respectively. Walled garden platforms use their own identity sets and DSPs to self-attribute and optimize campaigns, which is a nontransparent practice even by walled garden standards. Advertisers only get reported results, and the IDs aren’t available. With TTD and Acxiom, advertisers can access log files and build on top of their own first-party data set or CRM base.” ⬇️ #programmatic #ctv #measurement #avod #ott https://lnkd.in/e5gCE8tc

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Snapchat is consumers’ #2 most preferred platform across the globe - per Kantar's latest Media Reaction report. Why? Because people see Snapchat ads as fun, entertaining, and less intrusive. This is a huge opportunity for advertisers to reach consumers where and when they actually want to engage. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/ekV-9-qa

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