It’s a common lament: TV needs to evolve from transacting on impressions to transacting on outcomes. But transacting on outcomes is a far climb from transacting on CPMs, where TV has lived for decades.That begs the question: is transacting on outcomes really the goal? Ad Age’s Jack Neff sat down with experts across the media buying ecosystem, including WPP Media’s Nicolas Grand, EDO’s Kevin Krim, Human Ventures’s Joe Marchese and OpenAP’s Chris LoRusso to talk outcomes-based advertising and more.

“We’re trying to climb a mountain. Where we need to go is at the top, which is outcomes, [that’s] what matters to clients. A CPM is literally at the bottom of the mountain. We’re trying to climb the mountain but we’re starting from a very low base.” - Nicolas Grand

From a media seller perspective, attention is king. It gives marketers the control to drive down-funnel engagement and outcomes how they see fit. If media sellers promise attention, it’s then up to buyers to take that and turn it into outcomes. 

“What’s blocking us from having data matter is we’re measuring the wrong things.” - Joe Marchese

But actually optimizing on last-click outcomes doesn’t work because it ignores that humans have agency. Just because it's hard to prove attribution on one-to-many platforms, like TV, doesn’t mean those platforms aren’t playing a big role in driving outcomes. If you only optimize on the platforms with clear attribution, our panelists agreed that margins will shrink and you’ll kill your brand in the process.

“The 21st century consumer does not sit on their hands and watch a great brand campaign and do nothing... they are out there pursuing the consumer journey and [at EDO] all we want to do is give TV fair credit for that.” - Kevin Krim

Sometimes short-term ROI, like outcomes, comes at the expense of long-term ROI and brand awareness, and marketers cannot be successful without both. Last-click attribution platforms have done a great job of getting marketers to care deeply about short-term ROI; it’s easy to measure and prove growth. Getting brand marketers to care about and prioritize the long-term brand impact channels is a hurdle TV collectively needs to overcome.

It’s an area where AI can provide an immediate benefit–by helping measure the impact of every touchpoint across the specific KPIs that matter to marketers. AI tools can take understanding outcomes beyond the what to the why: understanding intent in context, and powering real, monumental change from panels and surveys to big data and behaviors. But AI doesn’t solve the fragmentation issue, and it’s an area where open collaboration will remain critical, especially in an ecosystem where the walled gardens are quickly standing up their own AI tools to reinforce the closed loop to keep dollars within their platform.

“Fragmentation by design requires collaboration and consistency [to overcome].” - Chris LoRusso