‘The beginning of a trend’: Performance metrics begin creeping into different parts of publishers’ ad deals

“We believe this mentality is going to lead to happier clients,” Stinchcomb said. 

Like many things that have defined media over the past two years, the performance metrics creep is the acceleration of a trend that had been advancing slowly for years. Publishers ranging from Meredith to The Wall Street Journal have offered versions of performance guarantees on large print ad deals for nearly two decades; more recently, publishers such as The Telegraph were backing pitches for their new branded content operations with sales guarantees. 

But the rise, spread and continued influence of the pandemic accelerated the advertising world’s focus on performance. And the recent privacy changes made by Google and, more recently, Apple, have pushed things into another gear by scrambling how advertisers measure the efficacy of their ad spending.

“A lot of this is happening at the same time that the measurement system that really held up on DR programs has more or less begun to shatter,” said Zach Ricchiuti, director of client solutions at Kepler Group. While that instability hasn’t compelled many brands to take their money out of the walled gardens, Ricchiuti added, “what we’re seeing from client leadership is [we’re being asked] to figure out more integrated activations.”

Above and beyond the metrics that are shaping these deals, advertisers’ focus on performance is having an ever-increasing influence on how they allocate their budgets. While display or video ad campaigns might not be evaluated using bottom-funnel KPIs such as direct sales, advertisers are starting to reserve portions of their ad budgets so they can be directed, on the fly, toward programs that are performant: An advertiser that notices strong results in the middle of a large campaign, for example, might throw several thousand dollars more into it. 

This mindset is also starting to affect what publishers build. Penske Media’s SHE Media, for example, recently rolled out a purchase-intent graph as part of its first-party data studio, knowing that being able to target different kinds of content at people who were part or most of the way through the process of buying a certain kind of product might drive better outcomes for advertisers. 

“[The emphasis on performance], it’s always been there,” said Mark Howard, the chief advertising and partnerships officer of PMC. “I just think it’s really accelerated a lot in the last year, even more so this year. 

“If you can bring commerce, your data people, your rev ops people who understand how to optimize,” he added, “you can build really compelling, holistic offerings.”