Future of Marketing Briefing: Media measurement is becoming an asset in boardroom theater

Starbucks chief Brian Nicol, for example, devoted time during the coffee chain’s earnings call to praise his CMO Tressie Lieberman for her marshalling of its $190 million budget.

“I love the way they’re using the dollars. The budget will obviously continue to grow with the business as we grow,” he said. “The team and [Lieberman] are doing a great job of making sure that we’re investing in the places where we believe we can drive transactions, drive the brand, build that loyalty and love, and make sure people understand what Starbucks stands for.”

There was a similar story during Procter & Gamble’s earnings call. “We’ve gotten much better in our learnings over the past 12 months on what is the right mix of spending across these different investment buckets to get the biggest lift on the business,” said president and CEO Shailesh Jejurikar. His CFO Andre Schulten made the point even clearer. “I firmly believe we have a big opportunity to increase the effectiveness of our media spend … I don’t think we’re at 100% effectiveness potential, and that’s the investment we’re making in media capabilities,” said Schulten.

They’re not alone. Reckitt Benckiser finance chief Shannon Eisenhardt also found time to reference the CPG firm’s rising ad spend, while Canada Goose’s second-quarter release also highlighted “a more disciplined” approach to brand-building efforts.

To be sure, marketing budgets are all but flat across the wider economy, and not all brands are so confident that they’d tout their effectiveness frameworks to shareholders. According to a survey conducted by WPP-owned measurement firm Gain Theory, 49% said they weren’t confident the data they had would help them defend marketing decisions to a CFO. 

Starbucks, P&G and Unilever are businesses that trade on their brands. You’d expect, therefore, for their leaders to have a greater appreciation of the art and science of marketing. However, P&G issued a profit warning in January amid falling sales, while the Seattle coffee shop chain has been grappling with a commercial decline that’s seen it close 1% of stores in North America and a PR snafu in South Korea that saw its CEO for the country fired. Both companies are keen for good news, and the fact they’re highlighting media effectiveness now shows how its premium has risen.

Comments made earlier this year by other U.S. advertisers confirm the trend. Marc Swandon, CEO of United Parks & Resorts – the company behind SeaWorld and Busch Gardens – told analysts the company was “making fundamental changes to our media mix, channel and geographic allocation.” And speaking during its May 6 first-quarter earnings call, Kraft Heinz CEO Steve Cahillane was keen to highlight the company’s efficiency push through “fewer, more effective media partners, and launching stronger consumer-driven creative.” The company’s global return on ad spend increased by 8% as a result of such efforts, he said.

Rising interest in marketing effectiveness is driving other industry subplots. Agency execs say they’re directing their courtship dances towards boardroom seats other than the CMO as they work to secure briefs. And as large advertisers pursue AI-enabled content engines capable of spitting out hundreds of variations on creative assets for use in digital display and paid social channels, demand for a way to measure which of those assets work best is increasing, leading to an increase in demand for companies like System1. 

The company is now the subject of a £43.1 million takeover bid from British marketing services group Brave Bison. The firm’s board has rejected two cash-and-share offers at the time of writing, but the Social Chain owner may yet force through a deal. Meanwhile, per Variety, Fox and measurement firm iSpot inked a deal earlier this week to provide ad effectiveness data to the TV giant’s brand clients.

Holding company bosses are alive to this shift. During this month’s Publicis Groupe earnings call, CEO Arthur Sadoun highlighted the opportunity within sports marketing for the French company, not just in skimming a margin from its rapid growth, but in proving to clients that sports investment can be “measurable at scale,” in Publicis’ case via its data business Epsilon. Omnicom’s tech chief Paolo Cerruti, meanwhile, argued to justify the U.S. ad titan’s AI investments as a means of driving “better results and better outcomes” for clients during its Q2 call Wednesday (July 29). 

Advertising disclosures from CEOs are usually limited to a sizzle reel and a couple of lines relating to their summer brand campaign. They don’t usually declare their “love,” as Nicol did, for ad dollars.

Now they’re learning that, by framing ad spend as a data-backed investment in their business, they can advertise their expertise to shareholders just as well as consumers.

Numbers to know

€212 million: the amount spent on World Cup-specific ads by Adidas, per its latest earnings. That’s $244.4 million in greenbacks.

$300 million: The value of NIL partnership deals in the last year, rising from $140 million in 2025, according to Learfield.

24%: Alphabet’s revenue increase in the last quarter.

88%: The proportion of marketers who believe their company’s AI use is increasing its carbon footprint. Just 36% have bothered to measure, though, according to a survey by 51toCarbonZero.

48%: The percentage of marketers that are worried about using AI for creative.

95%: The percentage of ChatGPT users that also use Google.

15: The date in September when TikTok’s U.S. chief security officer Will Farrell will testify before the House Select Committee on China.

63%: Percentage of U.S. AI search users that use an AI assistant to directly answer a question.

What we’ve covered

Time has started serving ads to AI Agents

Time has begun serving ads to AI bots, per senior media reporter Sara Guaglione. Ally Bank and Project Management Institute are among the first buyers.

Inside Unilever’s 300,000 creator network: the logistics behind the headline number

Rani Al Hajji, chief growth and transformation officer for Unilever Personal Care, talked Alyssa Mercante and Kimeko McCoy through the nuts and bolts of its influencer engine.

OpenAI is already building the org chart of a mature ad business

Two OpenAI job postings point to a reseller model linking direct, reseller and outsourced channels — closer to Netflix’s hybrid build than Google’s. The Meta-shaped org structure is being compressed into an ad business five months old, driven by a $2.5 billion target eMarketer thinks will fall 90% short.

How AI costs are quietly reshaping principal media deals

Holdcos are absorbing clients’ AI infrastructure costs in exchange for a fixed share of spend running through principal media — one CMO was offered the whole AI bill covered for 70% of budget. The inventory markup funds it, so no token bill ever appears, layering fresh opacity onto a practice clients already distrusted.

FreeWheel adds show-level reporting to tackle streaming’s transparency problem

Comcast-owned ad tech firm FreeWheel is rolling out show-level reporting for advertisers using its ad buying platform Buyer Cloud, Tim Peterson reports.

What we’re reading

Elon Musk’s X settles multiyear legal battle with the World Federation of Advertisers

X and the WFA have settled X’s 2024 “illegal boycott” lawsuit over the Garm brand safety initiative, with no terms disclosed, according to the Financial Times. The WFA confirmed it won’t restart GARM or anything like it, while X’s appeal continues against the other advertisers named.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Nears 1 Billion Weekly Active Users Seven Months After Target

A billion people use ChatGPT every week, but it’s taken the company seven months longer than projected to reach that milestone, per The Information.

Mastercard puts its cards on creators with a new business debit card

Manifest and Mastercard have launched a business debit card for creators, bundling banking with invoicing, expense and tax tools for irregular platform and brand income. It follows Visa and TikTok’s UK creator card in April — both bets on owning the financial layer under creator businesses, according to The Verge.

Facebook parent Meta signs AI licensing agreement with Newsmax

Meta signed an AI licensing deal with Newsmax, covering current and archived content for its AI search and discovery tools across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. It follows similar deals with News Corp, Warner Bros Discovery, Fox News Media, the Daily Caller and others, all involving link-outs to publisher stories plus AI-generated summaries, per The Desk.