The Outcomes Error Outcome-based, aka performance, advertising has hovered around 65% of digital ad spend for the past 15 years. Every few years there's been a new innovation that has kept spend at that level - from the flood of Facebook app-install ads in the early 2010s, to the RocketFuel and DTC boom mid-decade, to the RMN explosion in the early 2020s. Besides app-installs, most of these were transacted on CPM or CPC and optimized to outcomes. About 99% of Meta’s spend runs on CPM, and Amazon’s mostly on CPC. Lately, a few vendors and a PR guy have been pushing “The Outcomes Era” - claiming that advertisers have started paying for business outcomes instead of impressions or clicks. This simply doesn't show up in the data, and it's a very bad idea - more Error than Era. All advertising is about driving outcomes and has been optimized using them since before MMM. But paying for outcomes is a great way to get the worst possible version of that outcome, and over time, to train platforms to find outcomes better than you can, and eventually sell them to your competitors. Next time a PR guy tells you "it's the outcomes era", ask if they're willing to sell you outcomes (in this case, coverage) instead of a retainer and watch the gears grind. I’ll be talking about “The Outcomes Error” at the #Marketecturelive event in a couple of weeks. There might be room for one more on stage if anyone wants to help defend the outcomes era thesis (the PR guy bailed).
The outcomes era is juvenile marketing. It is new and improved teeth whitening Colgate at its worst designed to perpetuate Adtech seizing control from brands in an overly complicated ecosystem.
Great to discuss this cause I am wondering "When does the Relevance Era starts?" Great work by folks into measurement and meaningful data connection to reveal insights that foster relevance both in editorial as well as commercial content :)
I agree that contorting existing models too “outcomes” is a fools errand, but it doesn’t change the fact that when you can prove improvement to actual outcomes at scale, it’s incredibly powerful. Meta isn’t bought for cheap CPMs, it’s for effective CPMs and this creates a better business model. AND I’m allowed to say this since I do sell outcomes and it’s better than PR…
Eric Tourtel
3d
Spot on
Erez Levin
4d
Spot on and I'm excited to hear you share this on stage to a group of people that really have to hear and understand the Error of Outcomes, which every marketing practitioner that sees through the BS of our industry already gets. If only they conceded that 'quality-adjusted reach' is an outcome, then I could certainly get behind the term, though I'll never agree that the vague term Outcomes should be our North Star. Quality Era, Effectiveness Era, or whatever else, just not Outcomes Era.
That's a really interesting perspective on the potential downsides of focusing solely on outcome-based advertising. The point about platforms eventually leveraging that data against advertisers is especially thought-provoking.
Couldn’t agree more, I said pretty much the same thing at the AWC conference in London yesterday.
Every outcome metric and methodology can be (and is) easily manipulated to produce a desirable result. AI will only make it worse.
Founder, Marketecture Media. Author, Yield: How Google Bought, Built, and Bullied its Way to Advertising Dominance.
4dFor the record, there is not, in fact "room for one more on stage." Thank you for your attention to this matter.