You wouldn’t let a sports team umpire their own games, so why is this now happening in media and marketing, and particularly within holding companies, argues Prophet CEO Jordan-Taylor Bartels?
There’s a strange thing happening in marketing measurement today. We’re finally getting more sophisticated tools, more data, more computing power, and yet somehow, we’re muddying the waters just as fast. Amid the surge of new modelling solutions, dashboards, and media-mix narratives, one question sits there, annoying everyone: who’s actually keeping score here?
In most other industries, finance, law, and medicine, we accept that measurement must be independent. We don’t let a bank self-audit. We don’t let a pharma company approve its own trials. But in marketing, we’ve become oddly comfortable with letting those who benefit from spend increases be the ones telling us whether that spend is working.
It’s as if we’re playing in a high-stakes championship game, and the referee is also the coach of one of the teams. Sure, that might pass in an under 7s footy match when a parent steps in to blow the whistle. But we’re not an under 7’s game. We’re talking about billions of dollars being moved around Australia’s economy every year under the banner of “media effectiveness.” And yet, too often, the “referee” has skin in the game.
A matter of control
This is not just about optics. It’s about control. If you’re a brand, particularly a CMO or CFO, your ability to allocate budget confidently, test new channels, and pivot under pressure is only as strong as the truth of your measurement. If that truth is diluted, nudged, or “guided” by those who benefit when media spend rises or moves via recommendation, you’ve already lost control.
Let’s be blunt: the very platforms offering sophisticated measurement tools cannot be the independent judge of media impact when their ENTIRE own business model is built on growing that same media investment. Similarly, anyone who can potentially benefit (through design) should not be the final arbiters of measurement when the results have direct implications on their own revenue streams. There is a difference between being strategic collaborators and being gatekeepers to the truth.
This is where roles and responsibilities must be clearly redrawn.
Agencies should be exactly what their best talent wants them to be: creative problem-solvers and strategists who unlock ideas and execute with brilliance. Publishers should be allies in innovation, supporting bold plans with content, reach, and inspiration. But neither should be expected to referee the match they are playing in.
That job falls to independent measurement.
Independence isn’t about isolation. Prophet, for instance, works closely with agency teams, client-side analysts and publishers themselves.
But our goal isn’t to be liked. It’s to be accurate.
It’s to give the brand-side leaders the kind of honest, unvarnished perspective that lets them make big, directional decisions with confidence. Measurement should sharpen the game, not favour one side.
And it’s worth saying: we work with a number of great agencies and agency people who are committed to driving the best outcomes for their clients. Great agencies do great work, and we’re proud to collaborate with them. The ones who thrive in this model are the ones who don’t need to control the measurement, because they’re confident in the strength of their ideas and execution. Independent measurement doesn’t threaten that excellence. It enhances it. It frees agencies to focus on what they do best, without carrying the burden of proof.
Measurement vs persuasion
In many ways, we are still trying to climb out of the shadows of the early 2000s, where marketing measurement was either a black box or a PowerPoint. We’ve come too far to slip back into soft metrics, vague attribution, or conflict-ridden MMMs masquerading as impartial science.
Because here’s the really uncomfortable truth: if measurement is not independent, it is not measurement. It is persuasion. It’s a sales pitch dressed up as data science.
And persuasion is cheap. It can be bought over a lunch, or promised away in a quarterly review.
But independence, that’s expensive (ask any measurement company to find out just how much it costs to start one up). It costs you the right to tell a comfortable story. It forces you to deal with the parts of your strategy that aren’t working. It dares to point out that your media mix might be driving volume, but not value. Or that the best move isn’t to spend more, but to spend better, or even less.
That discomfort is not something to shy away from. It’s a strategic advantage. Because the brands that lean into it, those who embrace independent measurement as a core muscle of their operating rhythm, don’t just perform better. They understand why they’re performing better. They become antifragile. They make faster, smarter decisions. And they stop reacting to media trends and start defining them.
We owe it to the industry to define these lines clearly:
The agency: executes and advises.
The publisher: enables and distributes.
The brand: decides.
And the measurement partner? Measures. Independently. No dog in the fight. No performance bonus if the line goes up. Just truth, clarity, and the ability to help the brand see things others miss.
In this structure, everyone wins.
Because the only thing more dangerous than no referee is a biased one.
