Since the old advertising playbook no longer tells the full story of success, marketers are rethinking what it looks like. Today’s measurement leaders are connecting brand building with performance, using data and AI to understand how every touchpoint contributes to growth.

Here are some key takeaways from industry leaders during this week’s Advertising Week New York event.

The great measurement debate

For CMOs, the conversation around measurement isn’t just about optimizing spend; it’s about proving marketing’s seat at the table.

“The question is very simple that comes from the CEO: Is marketing driving sales?” said Drew Panayiotou, CMO of Keurig Dr Pepper. “The misconception is that we know for certain to the penny what we get when we put a dollar into marketing… We feel confident, plus or minus 10 to 15%. But we’ve got a ways to go with all the walled gardens and fragmentation.”

This underscores the need for a new mindset that recognizes multiple definitions of value.

• “If the middle funnel or upper funnel is predictive of the lower funnel, then those metrics really matter. Move away from a single kind of truth around value and measurement, it’s the ‘and’ of all those factors,” said Dana McGraw, senior vice president, data and measurement science at Disney Advertising.
• That shift means abandoning the old funnel metaphor altogether.
• “We’re moving away from the notion of a funnel,” said Panayiotou. “We know we want to do things that drive performance and show the value of sales.”

The rise of intelligent measurement

AI and machine learning are transforming how marketers think about cause and effect.

“We’re using machine learning to do correlational impact analysis,” said Jeffrey Bustos, senior vice president, retail media analytics at Merkle. “Incrementality is your objective and these are the three metrics, whether it’s new brand or category share or frequency, that have the highest correlational impact to that incremental number.”

In the future, measurement should feed directly into smarter targeting and creative decisions.

• “How can metrics influence your messaging? The best form of AI is, if I buy bacon, show me paper towels,” said Bustos.
• That intelligence extends beyond on-site performance.
• “Having closed-loop measurement and knowing that an offsite CTV ad is driving an outcome beyond GRPs or lift is incredibly valuable,” he added. “It lets brands make decisions faster and smarter.”

Moving beyond ROAS

As retail media surges, marketers are increasingly impatient with surface-level metrics.

• “Everyone in this room knows ROAS is imperfect, and everyone in this room is using ROAS,” said Andrew Lipsman, independent analyst and consultant at Media, Ads + Commerce.
• He urged the industry to stop applying it to upper-funnel campaigns, where it “actually understates, and sometimes hurts, the value.”

Instead, marketers should pivot toward causal modeling and incrementality measurement.

“If you do good causal modeling, you’re going to see that RMNs actually are high performers when it comes to incrementality,” said Lipsman. “If you do marketing mix modeling (MMM), it favors tonnage, it’s going to be the big social channels, it’s going to be TV.”

Building a holistic measurement framework

However, MMM remains a valuable tool in marketers’ measurement mix because it offers a holistic view of how all media impact business outcomes.

• “[MMM takes] into account your paid media, your owned media, all of the other factors that go into your business drivers, whether it’s your price [or] promotions,” said Dan Kelley, group manager (consumer packaged goods and restaurants), marketing science at Snap Inc.
• This gives companies an “even playing field” so they can understand how their business is doing overall, he said.

Kelley recommends combining sales lift measurement and MMM efforts “because they are trying to measure the same thing, offline or at least total sales outcomes as driven by different aspects of the business.”

Integrating short-term sales lift with long-term brand goals marks the next evolution in measurement science, where marketers can connect immediate performance with sustained growth.