The digital ad industry is obsessed with outcomes – to its detriment.
That’s the case made by Erez Levin, principal at media consultancy Emet Advisory, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
Levin has often pushed back against the industry hype machine touting its “Outcomes Era” and the promise of advanced ad targeting and optimization based on conversion data.
By putting outcomes above all else, Levin argues, digital advertisers have incentivized publishers and platforms to take credit for driving conversions, even when their ads have little demonstrable impact on consumer behavior.
Google – where Levin worked for thirteen years as a product and strategy specialist – has benefited more than most from the outcomes-driven status quo.
But Judge Leonie Brinkema’s ruling earlier this month that Google’s ad tech business constitutes a monopoly is an opportunity for the industry to break away from the Outcomes Era and the race to the bottom that’s tainted the open web, Levin says.
Likewise, Levin says, Google’s decision last week to once again pivot its cookie strategy for its Chrome browser shows why marketers need to double down on their own methods for assessing media, rather than following Big Tech’s whims.
Much like the tide appears to be turning against Google, it may also be turning against outcomes, according to Levin. “Enough buyers have moved on from attribution,” he says. “They know it’s highly inaccurate and likely misleading.”
As a sign of the shifting tide, Levin points to Google and Meta releasing open-source MMM tools and seemingly downplaying their previous emphasis on attribution.
“Even the big guys that have benefited the most from these legacy systems know that they’re not long for this world,” Levin says, “so they’re trying to build alternatives.”
Also in this episode: Why the “lemon market” of principal media needs media quality measurement, whether probabilistic audiences should be labeled in programmatic platforms, and how Google has demonstrated that it can make or break ad tech standards like ads.txt or the new video.plcmt field for labeling online video.
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