Future-Proof Advertising Measurement in 2022 and Beyond

Every year in December, they start to show up on news sites and social feeds: posts reviewing the year that has passed and looking forward at what’s to come. The “top 10 things to expect in 2022” listicles may be well-intentioned and even entertaining, but most are just a shot in the dark at predicting what will actually unfold in the year ahead. 

If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected and prepare to quickly adapt when unplanned changes surface. Nowhere is this more true than advertising. The media industry, long plagued by a lack of transparency and wavering trust between all parties involved, has experienced a sweeping upheaval with dramatic repercussions. 

For years, marketers have been pressured to trust agencies and platforms reporting on their own performance and accept results calculated by “black box” attribution vendors. More recently, privacy-driven policy changes have wreaked havoc on platform reporting and attribution, compromising accuracy to a point that marketers can no longer reluctantly accept.

Apple’s privacy measures sank platform-reported conversions and stock prices alike. It’s convenient and easy to point the finger at Apple for the state of panic many marketers currently find themselves in, but the demise of user-level tracking and third-party data access was always in the cards. Apple just knocked over the first domino. 

It may be tempting to move ad budgets away from Google, Facebook, and Snap to “safer” channels, but the same issues are impeding the ability to track and measure advertising for every online platform. The old way is broken. The only way forward is a system of measurement that is independent of the platforms, doesn’t fall apart as ID tracking crumbles, and enables marketers to easily adapt to whatever the future holds. 

Independent incrementality experiments, such as geo-matched market testing or first-party audience split testing, can connect advertising tactics to business metrics in a statistically sound way that removes platform reporting bias. Mapping media’s influence to data from the business transaction system of record provides advertisers with a clean read on the true incremental contribution of media at the channel, campaign, or ad set level – no tracking required. 

This has been our focus at Measured since day one. We aren’t trying to adapt flawed measurement methods of the past and force-fit them into what marketers require today. We were on the same attribution roller coaster as everyone else for decades – and we decided it was time to get off. We built our business and our products from the ground up in anticipation of what is happening right now. 

Measured has dedicated years of research and development to creating a framework of transparency and trust that allows marketers to stop compromising on measurement and start using it to drive business. That’s what marketers truly need in 2022 and beyond. We don’t have a crystal ball to see into the future, but we do know that the old way of doing things has finally collapsed under its own weight. 

So, no top ten predictions here. I leave you instead with warm wishes for a lovely holiday season and a happy, healthy new year. I’m confident that we will continue to see unprecedented change in the advertising industry (and beyond), and equally sure that independent incrementality measurement is the right way to future-proof your operations. 

With transparent measurement delivered by a neutral party, marketers can protect themselves from the whims of an unpredictable environment and regain the confidence to build towards a great year ahead.