In honor of International Women's Day, I wanted to recognize 2 women that have had a profound impact on my life. One of them personal, another professional.
My mom, a lifelong nurse, specializing in end-of-life care (hospice) and mid-to-late-stage cancer care, always taught me that the most important thing anyone can do in their life is to CARE, whether for a person or a cause. With 8 billion people on this planet and countless causes to #care about, we each have a limited capacity to give our energy. While I’m not always great at expressing my gratitude, one of the things I care most about is the people I surround myself with, both personally and professionally.
One practice we’ve implemented in our team meetings is a “shout-out” session. We all may think positive things about our colleagues, but we don’t always communicate them. And I’ve never met someone who doesn’t appreciate a genuine compliment. A simple gesture of appreciation can go a long way, and this few minutes is the best part of any of my meetings all month long.
As a small gesture of my appreciation, I want to take this a step further and publicly recognize a colleague I deeply respect & and has had a profound impact on my life. While I’d love to see more of this across our industry, I understand that publicly vouching for someone comes with the risk of them getting “poached”. So it hear it goes…
I have had the honor and privilege to work alongside Amanda Bookout (not on LinkedIn ATM, otherwise would have linked) for the past 15 years. Amanda is Viant’s Director of Business Intelligence. There is simply no one better in our industry that understands both the data complexities that AdTech brings and the business application of that data to bring it to life for our internal stakeholders and clients. She handles the most challenging of issues with calmness and intellect through experience. Her positive, can do attitude is infectious and I’m thankful to have been able to witness it as long as I have. Amanda‘s ability to find, hire, onboard, and develop talent is nothing sort of amazing.
For those who have ever worked with Amanda, I encourage you to show your appreciation and continue this shout-out, whether it’s through internal Slack, an email, or a comment below. I’ll compile all the comments and include them in an Amanda dedicated episode of the AdTech AI Files Podcast to round out this shout out. Let’s celebrate the people who make a difference.
Throw the image in a PPT and introduce it to your next team meeting and hashtag#measure what happens!hashtag#ShoutOut hashtag#Recognition hashtag#Teamwork hashtag#NoAI hashtag#IWD25

Use it or Lose it: a Mobile Measurement Partner ofcourse
Mobile in-app environments convert 3x more often than mobile web. Think about how often you buy Starbucks coffee through the app vs. opening Safari or Chrome to place an order. For most of us, it’s a night-and-day difference, in-app is faster, more convenient, and personalized. In cases like this, app conversion rates aren’t just higher, they’re the dominant way customers engage and buy.
Yet, there are no cookies or traditional pixels in an in-app environment, meaning the standard ways most marketers measure performance don’t include mobile in-app conversions. This leaves a huge gap in understanding your true media impact.
The in-app environment is a different world, frictionless UX, higher engagement, and better retention. To truly measure the impact of your media spend, you need a Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) integrated into your DSP.
The good news? The best DSPs can do two key things:1️⃣ Pre-built integrations with your MMP – With simple provisioning, you can securely share data with your DSP for retargeting and measurement.2️⃣ Off-the-shelf incremental lift measurement – The best DSPs work seamlessly with MMP data to provide clear insights into the true impact of your campaigns.
At the end of the day, it’s simple: use your mobile data or lose viability. If your measurement strategy ignores in-app conversions, you’re making decisions with incomplete data—and in a world where mobile dominates, that’s a risk no marketer can afford
#MobileMarketing #MMP #DigitalAdvertising #AppEngagement #MarketingROI #AdTech
If looking for an MMP, check out: AppsFlyer Branch Kochava Singular Adjust

Privacy vs. Blocking: The Real Story Behind Consumer Choice
There’s a big difference between consumers opting out of tracking (which would be every consumers right) and Big Tech outright blocking measurement for their own gain. Yet, the lines keep getting blurred.
Take Apple’s Private Relay, a feature that allows users to effectively be routed through a VPN while browsing in Safari, making you invisible across the web. It sounds like a major privacy shift, but in reality? After nearly 4 years of Apple pushing it, we see only ~16% of Apple related bid requests routed through Private Relay, meaning most users aren't opting-in. Perhaps due to widespread complaints of Private Relay interfering with the user's experience. I personally experienced an issue with getting onto Netflix while testing Private Relay, as Netflix couldn't verify my location properly.
Now, compare that to a marketer simply adding a pixel on their own website to share their first-party data with their preferred measurement or DSP providers. Apple’s broader privacy policy automatically block nearly 2/3rds of pixel-based measurement hits (and upwards of 85% for some marketers), regardless of whether the consumer has explicitly opted out. That’s not consumer choice, that’s a platform-driven decision that limits visibility into what’s actually driving business outcomes for all marketers alike. Benefiting Big Tech in the name of “privacy”, forcing marketers to integrate and further leverage Big Tech's products.
So what can you do about it?✅ Leverage 1st-party data: Build direct customer relationships and own your data.✅ Adopt clean rooms: Securely match and analyze data without relying on big tech.✅ Use server-side pixels: Bypass browser-based restrictions to improve measurement accuracy.
The future of measurement isn’t about waiting for Big Tech’s next move, it’s about taking control of your own data strategy.
#Marketing #AdTech #Privacy #FirstPartyData #PrivateRelay #Measurement #AdTechAIFiles

Linear TV vs. Connected TV: The Frequency Problem Marketers Can’t Ignore
After running Linear TV vs. Digital measurement studies for the past decade, one pattern remains consistent:
Dolllar for dollar, more times than not, Linear TV campaigns have 3x higher frequency than CTV. And here’s the issue, without frequency capping, that’s a lot of wasted impressions.
Why This Happens:
✅ Linear can’t control frequency. If someone watches the same channel daily, they’ll likely see the same ad over and over due to the upfront nature of Linear TV.✅ CTV is transacted programmatically, and therefore lets you set caps, allowing the marketer to control how often someone sees your ad✅ Heavy TV viewers skew the data. A portion of the audience gets bombarded, while others barely see the ad at all.
What This Means for Marketers:
🔹 Wasted Spend: Those extra impressions aren’t incremental reach, they’re just oversaturation for the same people.🔹 Diminishing Returns: Seeing an ad 5+ times in a week doesn’t necessarily make someone more likely to convert.🔹 Smarter Budgeting: CTV gives brands more control, meaning less waste and more efficient reach.
How to Fix It?
📌 Use digital measurement to quantify true reach & frequency.📌 Balance TV & digital to optimize reach without overexposure.📌 Consider CTV as a bridge, more control than linear, but the big-screen impact remains.
Linear TV still has its place, but without frequency controls, a huge chunk of ad dollars get wasted on the same eyeballs. Smart marketers are shifting spend to platforms where they can actually control the user experience. 🚀
#AdTech #MarketingMeasurement #TVAdvertising #DigitalMarketing #CTV #Programmatic #MediaBuying #GrowthMarketing #Advertising

The Death of Third-Party Pixels: Why First-Party Data is the Future
If you launched your own website tomorrow, you’d own everything: your customer relationships, purchase history, and insights. That’s first-party data, it belongs to you, and no one can take it away.
Your same business relies on pixels to understand performance, retarget your customers that have added your product to cart but yet to purchase, to optimize and measuring success. You rely on your partners, whether measurement providers or DSPs to help in this endeavor, which makes these Pixels “Third-Party Pixels”. Easy enough…
Only 1 problem, let’s take a look at who owns the browsers and operating systems that enables your business to pass your data to your partners:
📌 Google + Apple control 97% of the mobile operating system market (Android & IOS)📌 Google Chrome + Apple Safari account for over 85% of browser usage.
And when it doesn’t benefit BIG tech, they squash tracking in the naming of privacy (hello Private Relay and Cookie deletion), all of which is increasingly making third-party trackers obsolete.
What happens when your measurement strategy relies on pixels that no longer work?🚫 You lose visibility.🚫 You increasingly make decisions on a small part of the pie.🚫 Marketers without a first-party measurement strategy fall behind.
What can you do? The best marketers don’t rent data, they own it. They need to take matters into their own hands in a way that big tech can’t touch.
Winning in a cookieless world means:
✅ Implementing server-side tracking & clean rooms.✅ Building privacy-compliant, deterministic attribution models.
The brands that control their data will control their future.
AdTech AI Files latest Pod drop discussing this very topic. On Spotify now: https://lnkd.in/gwTMafsm
#FirstPartyData #MarketingMeasurement #AdTech #PrivacyFirst #CookielessFuture #DigitalAdvertising #DataOwnership #MarketingStrategy

Why Cookie-Based Measurement Sucks in 2025
Remember when cookies were amazing? Back in the ‘90s and early 2000s, they revolutionized online tracking. But today, they only capture 9% of online conversions. Why? Because cookies simply don’t exist in most of the places where modern digital engagement happens:

• ​ Connected TV – No cookies in your streaming ads.
• ​ Most computer browsers – Safari, Firefox, and even Chrome (if users opt out).
• ​ Mobile in-app – Cookies only work in mobile web (mostly Chrome).
• ​ Audio ads on smart devices – Your podcast ads aren’t tracking conversions.
• ​ Digital out-of-home (DOOH) billboards – Good luck using cookies on a Times Square billboard.
• ​ Consumer opt-outs – Chrome lets users block third-party cookies.

Here’s a real-world example: You see a Starbucks ad while searching the web on your phone. Later, you open the Starbucks app and place an order. Does a cookie follow you from web to app? Nope.
This is why cookie-based measurement is great for companies like Google (who control the walled gardens) but terrible for marketers at large. If you actually want to measure conversions, it has to happen at the household and person level—which, by the way, Viant may or may not have patented back in 2012.
Now, Viant is doubling down on this future, partnering with TransUnion to bring even stronger, cookieless identity resolution to marketers. With first-party data and identity-based measurement, brands can finally connect the dots across CTV, mobile, web, and beyond—no cookies required.
The digital world has moved beyond cookies. Has your measurement strategy?
#AdTech #MarketingMeasurement #CookiesAreDead #DigitalAdvertising #MarketingAnalytics #ConnectedTV #PrivacyFirst #FutureOfMarketing #DataDriven #MarketingStrategy #ConversionTracking #AdMeasurement #MarTech #CustomerJourney #OmnichannelMarketing #IdentityResolution #CookielessFuture

Based solely on Danilo Tauro (PhD) linked in post on 3/5/25 and the 110 commenters summariez using only AI.
Article for reference: linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7303063345098620928/

Why Incremental Lift Shrinks Over Time: The Lookback Window Effect ⏳📉
When clients ask "I thought lift would be higher/lower, my 1st question back is what lookback window are you using?"
One of the biggest factors in incremental lift measurement isn’t just the ad itself, it’s how long you wait to measure it.
✅ The shorter the lookback window, the higher the incremental lift. ✅ The longer the lookback window, the lower the lift.
Why? Because marketing works, but so does time.
At first, your test group (who saw the ad) is converting quickly, while your control group (who didn’t) hasn’t had time to act. But over time, some of the control group will naturally convert on their own, shrinking the perceived lift.
Lookback Window Impact on Lift: 📅 Day 1: 🚀 Huge lift! The test group is converting immediately after seeing the ad, while the control group has barely moved. 📅 Day 7: 🔥 Still strong lift—marketing is driving action faster than natural conversions. 📅 Day 14: 📉 Lift starts to drop as some of the control group naturally converts. 📅 Day 30: ⏳ Lift is at its lowest, as many in the control group who would have converted anyway have now done so.
What This Means for Marketers: 🔹 Short lookback windows (1-7 days) tend to overestimate lift because the control group hasn’t had time to convert. 🔹 Longer windows (14-30 days) give a more realistic picture but may undervalue short-term campaign impact. 🔹 The right lookback window depends on your product & buying cycle. A fast-moving CPG item might need a 7-day window, while a high-consideration purchase like a car or insurance policy might need 30+ days.
Marketing accelerates conversions, but time naturally fills the gap.
The key to accurate incrementality? Choosing a lookback window that reflects how real consumers behave. 🚀
#Incrementality #LiftAnalysis #MarketingMeasurement #AdTech #DigitalMarketing #GrowthMarketing #Attribution #MarketingAnalytics

Mark My Words: Contribution Will Be the Future of AdTech Measurement
We’re wrapping up our beta offering, and the feedback has been phenomenal. It just makes sense.
Take a look at the chart below—see how CTV is undervalued in traditional attribution models? Whether it’s Last Touch, First Touch, or Linear, they fail to capture the real impact of each channel. But Conversion Contribution? It tells a completely different story.
The industry is evolving, and it's time for measurement to evolve with it. Much more to come on this. 🚀
#AdTech #Attribution #CTV #MarketingMeasurement #ConversionContribution #AdTechAIFiles

The Best Marketers Have a Strategy for Moving Their Customers Through Each Phase of the Purchase Cycle
A long-time friend once shared an interesting insight about a global candy bar brand’s marketing strategy. Their mission wasn’t necessarily to get you to buy the candy bar at the cash register—but to get you to say no to it.
Think about that for a second.
Most of the products you walk by in a grocery store don’t even register in your mind. You don’t consciously think, “Should I buy this?” You just keep walking. But if a brand can move you from complete indifference to an active consideration, that’s already a huge win.
And it all starts with awareness—because awareness all starts with your brand’s message.
If people don’t know you exist, they’ll never consider you. If they don’t understand what makes you different, they won’t engage. The best marketers don’t just hope their audience will buy—they strategically move them through every phase of the purchase funnel, from awareness to consideration to conversion.
And when it comes to building brand awareness, there’s no better tool than Connected TV (CTV). It puts your message in front of the right audience, at the right time, in a format that drives engagement and recall. If you want to start winning the battle for consideration, start by making sure your brand is seen and heard in the first place.
#Marketing #CTV #BrandAwareness #Strategy #ConsumerBehavior