The End of 'Good Enough' Data: Advertising's Shift Toward Defensible Performance | AdExchanger

"One of the industry's most persistent misconceptions is that accountability lives downstream. Better reporting. Better attribution. Better dashboards. But, in reality, accountability begins far earlier, at the point where a business decides what it accepts as truth about identity. Who is real? Who is reachable? Who is persistent? Who has changed? Who should not be acted on at all? The uncomfortable reality is that every optimization decision that follows is only as credible as the answers to those questions."

"Accountability starts with identity Most performance stacks were built on the assumption that identity inputs were directionally sound. That assumption is now proving costly. Identity decay, fraudulent activity, noisy signals and misattributed behavior do not announce themselves as failures. They quietly distort models, inflate confidence and introduce volatility that teams struggle to explain after the fact. This is why performance accountability feels uncomfortable."

"It exposes how much of modern optimization relies on inference rather than reality. When leadership asks why results change, saying "the model adjusted" is not a sufficient answer. When finance asks whether spend is defensible, averages and blended metrics are not enough. When trust and safety teams get involved, intent and scale are irrelevant without proof of integrity."

Performance marketing now requires both measurable outcomes and accountability. Growth must be explainable, defensible, and resilient when conditions change. Accountability begins with accurate identity: determining who is real, reachable, persistent, changed, or should not be acted on. Many performance stacks assumed identity inputs were directionally sound, but identity decay, fraud, noisy signals and misattribution distort models and inflate confidence. Optimization decisions based on inferred signals become unreliable and introduce unexplained volatility. Finance, leadership, and trust teams require proof of integrity rather than blended averages. Organizations are shifting upstream to validate identity and embed accountability into early decision points.

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