In Platforms We Trust? | AdExchanger

"The future of measurement is set it and forget it, says Ty Ahmad-Taylor, Kantar's chief product officer, on this week's episode of AdExchanger Talks. In his view, we're heading toward a world - although we arguably already live in it - where marketers set their goals and budgets, then mostly get out of the way while platforms and AI do all the work, from media planning and budget allocation to optimization and measurement."

"The money is already moving that way, with billions flowing into platform tools that ask marketers to sit back just and trust the system. Last year, Meta - Ahmad-Taylor's former employer - told investors that the annual run rate for its end-to-end automated ad products, including Advantage+, had already reached $60 billion."

"But he also acknowledges that "objective truth" is hard to come by when dueling measurement methodologies - last click, multitouch attribution, media mix modeling - all tell different stories. Which is to say, even with all the data in the world, there's no single version of reality. "There's not 100% truth," Ahmad-Taylor says. "What we can get is an approximation if a person is willing to accept certain constraints on your ability to measure across platforms.""

Marketers increasingly move toward a set-it-and-forget-it measurement model where goals and budgets are set and platforms plus AI handle media planning, budget allocation, optimization, and measurement. Significant ad dollars are flowing into platform tools that promote end-to-end automation; Meta reported a roughly $60 billion annual run rate for its automated ad offerings. Marketers are being asked to be comfortable with a more hands-off approach, but trust and transparency concerns persist. Walled gardens are incentivized to act in good faith, yet competing measurement methods—last click, multitouch attribution, media mix modeling—produce different results. Accurate measurement may be an approximation if limitations across platforms are accepted.

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