By Ben Kartzman, President and COO of Attain
Performance marketing has evolved from a niche, down-funnel tactic to a universal imperative, driving decisions across all media channels and levels of business. In today’s fast-paced environment, every campaign is measured by its ability to deliver outcomes. Lately, however, the term “outcomes” has become overdetermined to the point of dilution.
As the demand for accountability grows, so too does the need to become precise in our definitions and distinguish between surface-level signals and meaningful business results. At a time when marketers are judged by delivering on revenue goals (aka sales), success lies in recognizing that not all outcomes are created equal and ensuring that our metrics guide us to those outcomes.
Much like the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, where excitement and urgency have sometimes led to overblown claims, the race for performance metrics has complicated the picture. When things like clicks, searches, engagement, and views are dubbed as metrics or indicators of success – we risk losing sight of what really matters. While these metrics offer directional insights and support, they don’t necessarily translate into true business impact like sales or longer-term revenue growth. It’s important not to conflate useful directional metrics with real outcomes. Ultimately, incremental sales are the only outcomes that matter. Everything else is a step toward that endpoint.
Not All Outcomes are Created Equal
While media metrics like clicks or site traffic have directional value, they fall short of capturing true business impact. The complexities of incrementality and attribution further complicate measuring real performance. Without focusing on business outcomes, marketers risk overestimating success by attributing results to campaigns that might have had limited incremental value. Even sales lift, often seen as a gold standard, can be misleading without SKU-level insights. For brands selling wholesale to retailers, understanding which specific products are driving sales and what media drives those products is critical – it’s also historically unattainable. So instead, marketers have made due with proxy outcomes instead. Directional is better than nothing.
Proxy metrics like foot traffic, site traffic, and clicks measure aspects of campaign effectiveness but should not be mistaken for business outcomes. For example, an increase in foot traffic can indicate higher brand awareness, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into sales; the real outcome is the sale, not the visit. Similarly, high site traffic is often seen as positive, but without conversion into sales, it remains a superficial metric. That does not mean, however, that these metrics have zero value. Quite the contrary: once purchase data showing real outcomes enters the picture, these indicators take on new meaning.With purchase data, “proxy” metrics are no longer proxies – they are touchpoints along a complete funnel. What is directional takes on new meaning when their destination is illuminated.
The Fragmentation of Purchase Data
Real outcomes are hard to measure because they are historically difficult to find. One of the biggest challenges marketers face today is the fragmentation of customer data. For many brands, the customer relationship is spread across multiple retailers and platforms, each of which aims to monopolize that relationship by building moats around their data.
When customer data is siloed across platforms, accurately attributing sales to specific marketing efforts becomes nearly impossible. Without a clear view of where and how conversions occur, marketers may misattribute success to less impactful channels. To overcome this challenge, marketers need to address the fragmentation of commerce data by adopting a unified, comprehensive, and source-agnostic view of outcomes.
The next critical challenge lies in activation. How easily can marketers integrate this unified data into their own systems or those of their media agencies? Interoperability between data stacks is still far from fully solved, and this barrier often limits the ability to drive meaningful business outcomes. Not only do marketers need source-agnostic purchase data, but this data must be accessible for activation in all the major nodes of media exchange.
Accountable to What?
The rush for performance isn’t just a trend; it’s a secular shift toward accountable media. But as we embrace this new era, the time has come to ask: accountable to what?
True accountability goes beyond clicks and site traffic. It means aligning with business outcomes that drive long-term growth and brand equity. The answer to that question lies in commerce data. It’s within these real-world transactions that we find the true measure of success. As the future of marketing unfolds, the ability to tie performance to meaningful commerce outcomes will define the brands that thrive.