Season 5, Episode 18: Advertising measurement in an uncertain economy (with Olivia Kory)
Apr 29, 2025
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In this engaging discussion, Olivia Kory, Chief Strategy Officer of Haus Analytics, shares her insights from her time on Netflix and Sonos. She delves into the complexities of measuring advertising efficiency amid economic uncertainty, exploring strategies for firms to assess marketing spend. Topics include the challenges performance advertisers face in a cookie-less world, the importance of A/B testing optimization, and how brands can 'get fit' for potential recessions while navigating evolving privacy regulations.
Advertisers are increasingly focusing on incrementality testing to accurately assess the true impact of their marketing strategies.
The divergence between cookie-dependent and direct-to-consumer brands highlights the evolving landscape of performance advertising without third-party cookies.
In an uncertain economy, brands must strategically adjust their budget allocations to maximize efficiency and optimize marketing measurements.
Deep dives
Context SDK Enhancements
Context SDK provides a solution that harnesses smartphone signals to determine user context, such as whether they are commuting or working. This capability allows apps to tailor notifications and offers to the user's current activity, resulting in a significant 80% increase in conversion rates and a 20% uplift in customer lifetime value for one of its clients. By optimizing the timing and relevance of messaging, apps can enhance user engagement and drive better business outcomes. This demonstrates the potential impact of using contextual data to inform marketing strategies.
The Role of Incrementality Testing
Incrementality testing has emerged as a crucial tool for marketers seeking to quantify the true impact of their advertising efforts. With the backdrop of privacy changes, brands are increasingly focused on understanding which channels and strategies yield genuine results and how they can optimize their media spend. For instance, a case involving Javi Coffee illustrated that upper funnel creatives, often perceived as less effective, could drive significant incremental sales compared to lower funnel assets. This indicates a pressing need for brands to rigorously evaluate their marketing strategies and adjust accordingly based on empirical data.
Impacts of Cookie Deprecation
The discussion around third-party cookies has highlighted underlying differences in how various types of advertisers operate. While some brands heavily rely on open web advertising and the nuances of cookie management, others—particularly direct-to-consumer brands—can thrive without. This difference underscores a prevailing divergence where performance-focused strategies on platforms like Meta and Google become more relevant, minimizing the impact of cookies on those advertisers' outcomes. This perspective shifts the focus from cookie concerns to broader issues of targeting efficacy and ad performance measurement.
Economic Environment and Advertising Strategies
In uncertain economic times, many advertisers are re-evaluating their strategies and shifting focus towards measurement and incrementality as they seek to optimize their budgets. The call for transparency in ROI has led brands to explore innovative approaches to identify effective channels while trimming unnecessary spending. This situation creates an opportunity for testing and understanding customer reach and role-based spending through geo experiments. Brands are advised to strategically reevaluate their budget allocation to maximize efficiency rather than making arbitrary cuts across the board.
Future of Measurement Practices
With rapid changes in the advertising landscape, especially relating to measurement and attribution, the industry's focus is shifting towards more sophisticated models. The reliance on multi-touch attribution (MTA) and incrementality has highlighted a necessity for advertisers to be proactive in understanding their measurement frameworks. As smaller brands leverage MTA for guidance, there is a growing emphasis on validating measurement tools against real-world performance. This evolving dynamic emphasizes the importance of robust marketing models that align with business objectives in a landscape of increasing complexity and uncertainty.
My guest on this episode of the podcast is Olivia Kory, the Chief Strategy Officer of Haus, an advertising measurement platform. Against the backdrop of tariffs and economic uncertainty, Olivia and I discussed how firms can think about assessing the efficiency of their marketing spend. Among other topics, we cover:
Why the open web is so foreign to many performance advertisers;
The right way to conceive of platform A/B testing tools that automatically optimize targeting;
How advertisers are auditing their measurement solutions in light of the tariffs and economic volatility;
What steps marketing teams can take to "get fit" ahead of a potential economic recession.
Thanks to the sponsors of this week’s episode of the Mobile Dev Memo podcast:
INCRMNTAL. True attribution measures incrementality, always on.
Clarisights. Marketing analytics that makes it easy to get answers, iterate fast, and show the impact of your work. Go to clarisights.com/demo to try it out for free.
ContextSDK. ContextSDK uses over 200 smartphone signals to detect a user’s real-world context, allowing apps to deliver perfectly timed push notifications and in-app offers.
Interested in sponsoring the Mobile Dev Memo podcast? Contact Marketecture.
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