In this joint byline, Anathea Ruys, CEO of UM Australia and Henry Innis, co-founder and CEO of Mutinex, argue publishers have an important role to play in defending marketing investment.
Upfronts season is done and dusted and the headlines were loud: everyone’s fighting for a bigger slice of budgets and a bigger role for data.
If there was a single theme, it was that clients and agencies are demanding clearer lines from media activity to business impact — not just new programming announcements. In fact, much of the Upfronts commentary this year revolved around measurement and effectiveness eclipsing the old focus on content sizzle, as networks repositioned around outcomes and ROI.
That makes sense, because we’re operating in what many are calling the “Outcomes Era” — where marketers brief against sales lift, qualified leads and ROAS first, and attention or CPM second. Multiple market updates point to lower‑funnel KPIs being specified in a majority of briefs for 2025, a clear signal that performance expectations have reshaped media buying.
It’s not that CPMs don’t matter. It’s that CPMs matter far less than the outcomes you deliver to the client’s bottom line. The industry’s own forums are saying it out loud: outcomes‑based buying is a fundamental shift in how media is valued, purchased and measured — and publishers who align to it will win disproportionately.
As leaders across agency and measurement, we want to champion an ecosystem that consistently leads to better client outcomes. Advertisers have been clear about the direction of travel for years: more transparency end‑to‑end, more accountability, and common standards that let marketers invest with confidence.
One of the biggest enablers of that confidence over the past few years has been the renaissance of Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM). Far from being a niche econometrics tool, MMM is now mainstream. Global bodies and platforms have published playbooks and open‑sourced tools, and surveys suggest a material share of marketers rely on MMM to understand how marketing drives business value.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the big tech platforms still hold a measurement advantage over traditional publishers. They’ve invested for years in robust reporting and conversions interfaces that let marketers integrate, export and validate performance at scale. As one example among many, Google’s Ads API exposes a comprehensive reporting layer that teams can query directly for MMM and finance workflows.
How do the platforms do it? They make the plumbing easy. Server‑to‑server conversions pipes, clean export schemas, and standardised fields that can be pulled weekly, automatically and consistently across accounts. A single integration — say Meta’s Conversions API — can connect a marketer’s back end to the ad system for durable measurement, with better fidelity than a pixel.
Publishers can absolutely close that gap. The first mindset shift is simple: treat measurement as a product, not a post‑campaign PDF. When measurement is a product, the job is to remove friction for the buyer. That means portable, machine‑readable data; documentation; and predictable cadence. It also means participating in the MMM ecosystem — agency‑run and independent — so advertisers can stress‑test results across methods and partners. The global direction of travel is crystal clear: build for measurement and accountability, and budgets will follow.
Where to start? Start small but start now. Make it push‑button simple for every client to export what ran, where it ran and how much was spent — by week. Weekly granularity is the MMM best‑practice sweet spot because it balances variation with noise and dramatically improves model robustness. Most MMM platforms operate to weekly frequencies with some, including Mutinex, occasionally dipping into daily.
Next, document a publisher‑wide schema that’s consistent across your sales channels — direct IOs, programmatic deals, and owned streaming — and include campaign names, placements, formats, impressions, reach, cost and (where available) attention/quality signals. Make file delivery predictable: S3 bucket, SFTP or secure link, every Monday before noon. If you want to go a step further, expose an authenticated API endpoint with pagination and a data dictionary, so agencies can automate ingestion.
Critically publishers also need to ensure every asset and property they sell – especially the ones that enable advertisers to be really distinctive – are able to be measured with the same level of accuracy, granularity and ease. That we still live in a world where TV sponsorships, special build out of home or audio partnerships still need to be entered into MMM models manually is astonishing. The solution to this sits firmly in the hands of the publishers who are still using the blunt instrument of a billing transaction to communicate that information to agencies. It’s in their best interest to build an instance that enables MMM models to clearly recognise all media assets.
Then, lean into independence. Buyers don’t just want more data; they want measurement that’s transparent. That’s why we’re seeing renewed investment in independent currencies and third‑party verification, plus MMM frameworks that invite scrutiny of assumptions and champion independence from publishers. The IPA’s latest effectiveness guidance underlines the role of MMM alongside experiments and attribution — and the need for a culture of learning over a chase for a single silver bullet.
If you still doubt that better measurement grows spend, look at what’s happening in the US sellers’ market. Warner Bros. Discovery, for instance, has expanded a multi‑year deal with VideoAmp to underpin planning, optimisation and audience guarantees across the 2025 Upfront season. That’s measurement capability being used as a competitive sales lever. (TVTechnology)
Australia has plenty of reasons to take this seriously. Advertising is a major growth engine for the economy — Deloitte Access Economics pegs the contribution at $53 billion, or 2.1% of GDP — and in a period of cost pressure, robust measurement is the fastest way to protect and grow those investments. (Advertising Pays – Deloitte/ACA)
What would “publisher‑grade measurement plumbing” look like in practice? A few pragmatic moves can make an outsized difference. First, align internally on a data dictionary that covers campaign metadata, site/app sections, placement types, audience segments, spend and delivery — and apply it consistently across teams. Second, decide on a weekly export SLA and stick to it. Third, create a “measurement portal” that lets any advertiser retrieve their own data on demand with role‑based permissions. Finally, have a standing slot in QBRs where your team shows how your export feeds into the client’s MMM or experimental design — not to influence the outputs, but to show you’re building for the buyer’s measurement reality.
There’s upside for everyone here. Publishers who make their data portable become easier to plan with, are able to genuinely be measured for the value they deliver in non standard assets and properties, which all ultimately makes them harder to cut from the plan. Agencies can replace manual reconciliation with modelling and strategy. Marketers get a cleaner read on the marginal ROI of your inventory versus alternatives. And the industry gets a more resilient, investment‑ready ecosystem.
We’re optimistic. If we can make measurement easy and accessible, align on weekly portability as a minimum viable product, and back independence as a principle, then confidence in measurement’s robustness will grow. And when confidence grows, investment follows. That’s how, even in a tougher macro environment, we ensure marketing delivers what it’s always had the power to deliver: growth for clients, confidence for CFOs and a robust media industry for the people who make it all happen, day in and day out.
