With the digital media industry facing more complexity and uncertainty than ever, brands are showing rising interest in outcome-based strategies that guarantee business results from their marketing investments. But some brands don’t have a full understanding of what “outcome media” really is, how it really works, what it accomplishes, why it matters, or where it’s going next. In episode 7 of our “People of Programmatic” podcast, part of our 10x10 series to herald Xaxis’ tenth anniversary, our guests help grapple with the challenges of having to show value for every dollar spent, when to rely on outcome media — as well as its pitfalls.

Episode Host:

• Henry Stokes, MD of Global Accounts, Xaxis

Episode Guests:

• Emily Knight, Business Development Director, The Trade Desk
• Michael Siewert, Global Programmatic Marketing Director, Colgate-Palmolive

In this episode, we discuss:

• The ways outcome media is defined.
• How brand marketers and their agencies can determine desired outcomes.
• The challenges that outcome media can help solve.
• The benefits of technology in using outcome media.
• How brands can embrace outcome media.

What is Outcome Media?
Outcome media is fundamentally about data, and about using that data across the spectrum of brand marketing and performance marketing, which have traditionally been seen as representing two sides of a divide. 

• Outcome media brings a new level of sophisticated thinking to marketing.
• It allows marketers to get a clear sense of what they can expect from their media campaigns.
• It also allows marketers to measure efficacy in real time, to be accountable to a defined outcome.
• It fulfills the needs brands have to quantify results and justify their ad spend.
• It can connect media across channels, for example connected TV, shoppable media and performance marketing.

Outcome Media help marketers focus

• Marketers need to think longer term, come up with a mix of metrics that prove with data and testing over time to have the best effects.
• They should focus on the goals, not the minutiae they measure to help reach those goals.
• It’s imperative to incorporate as much first-party data as possible.
• Marketers must test, test and test toward the goal. That can range from something like performance oriented metrics to more custom solutions such as interactions with a purpose-built API.

Outcome-based media will, our guests concur, be even more important as cookies start to diminish and first-party data become more important. Marketers can use the data that is available along with the metrics they’ve established to set hypotheses, test, analyze and continually improve to achieve their brands’ objectives.

Some Links:

• Xaxis website
• Colgate-Palmolive website
• The Trade Desk website
• Transforming media into outcomes (Xaxis)
• Is outcome-based media the future of media planning? (AdAge)
• Why outcome-based marketing is so successful (MarketingProfs)