Media Buying Briefing: With Aquila testing its wings, media agencies pay close attention to their clients’ work

All the major agency holdcos are involved at some point of Aquila’s development, brought in largely by their clients, which include Verizon, Disney, Chipotle, McDonald’s, Ford, GM, Uber, Pepsi, Unilever, P&G and others — some 30 marketers in total, according to Bill Tucker, Aquila’s CEO and a longtime agency exec. About 20 of them, including McDonald’s and P&G, are currently involved in the first round of trials. Tucker said it’s intentional to have not only the biggest but also some mid-sized advertisers participate in the trials. 

As Tucker explained it, Aquila aims to provide deduplicated reach and frequency insights across all media, as a means for advertisers to reduce frequency waste by 10%. He estimates the industry could save up to $50 billion over three years. 

Tucker and Aquila president Tina Daniels — who spoke at an ANA conference alongside a McDonald’s exec on Sept. 9 to explain Aquila to a research audience — argue this effort at solving the cross-media measurement conundrum is different is thanks to the involvement of the four major platforms, Meta, Google, Amazon and TikTok (Tucker hints that it’s just a matter of time before the other platforms join up). The four are providing impressions data, while Comscore is providing linear and CTV data, and Kantar is two-thirds of the way along in forming a 5,000 person “calibration” panel to cross-reference the findings. The product uses virtual ID technology to ensure privacy compliance around the consumer behavior. And Accenture has built the technological platform on which Aquila works.

Here’s how it works, according to a holdco exec who spoke on condition of anonymity: the virtual ID is created through the panel based on consumers’ actual behavior with a propensity that is then shared with each of the walled gardens and publishers, along with the names of the campaigns that each one is measuring. The impression delivery for that campaign is then sent back to the Accenture-built platform for the advertiser (and agency) to see the delivery. In doing that, the platform shows de-duplicated delivery of that campaign across the platforms and publishers.

Trials with over 20 major advertisers are underway, with plans to expand to the top 100 advertisers by 2026. The Media Rating Council is observing the entire process, and Aquila hopes to end up an accredited service in the end, with testing and greater publisher participation in 2026.

The marketers involved in early tests are hopeful they can finally get to optimizing reach and frequency to a point where waste is really minimized. “The biggest thing for us is to really understand what we’re planning to [do] versus what we’re buying,” said Alex Gaski, senior director of marketing and customer analytics at McDonald’s, at the ANA conference. “How are we actually reaching all of the 90% of U.S. adults who come to McDonald’s at least once a year?”

Gaski said McDonald’s tried to go it alone with crafting a cross-media solution a few years ago but ultimately abandoned the effort, realizing it needs to be a collective effort. “I was really happy that the industry was starting to band together, because I think there’s so much power when we unite — our collective intellect might, and … partnering with the platforms. I do think has been a major difference for me,” she added.

“P&G has been a longtime proponent for having an industry-wide, objective, transparent, cross-media measurement system,” said Kanishka Das, senior director of P&G’s global media, analytics and insights. “We believe this will enable a better experience for our consumers, better effectiveness for advertisers and a data-based approach to media across networks and publishers — a win-win-win. We are looking forward to Aquila’s continued progress, including trials, in the coming months.”

Generally the holding companies involved also see the potential to go farther than other cross-media measurement solutions have gotten. 

“We are very supportive of the initiative as it attempts to provide an answer to a real industry problem (deduplication of reach and frequency across platforms),” said Sebastien Hernoux, Annalect’s U.S. chief client solutions officer, in an email. “It’s encouraging to see the main media partners (Google, Meta, Amazon, TikTok) agree to share the relevant access to data for Aquila to build a platform to support brands — and in fact some of our clients are involved in the testing that’s happening in 2025. At this point, the goal of the test is to validate the methodology and confirm the results, and Aquila has been very transparent that brands/agencies should not use the data for media optimizations until they have confirmed the validity and accuracy of their outputs.”

One holdco research exec who declined to speak for attribution expressed optimism about Aquila’s potential but added they reserve some skepticism due to the payment structure. As it currently stands, advertisers pay a fractional amount of their marketing budget to fund the trials (with the tech giants also contributing to funding). This exec fears that after the first set of trials, advertisers will want to pass on that expense to agencies, which are already under enough financial pressure as it is. If that happens it could be a stumbling block to progress.   

It’s worth noting that Aquila borrows from a template built in the U.K., following an RFP from the World Federation of Advertisers in 2020 calling for cross-media measurement solutions. The end product, Project Origin, is up and running in the U.K. 

The holdco research exec said Project Origin’s existence gives them hope that Aquila can succeed. “It doesn’t mean everybody loves it, and it doesn’t mean it solved all the problems, but it has potential,” said the exec.

Color by numbers

Taking another look at holiday season advertising, AdRoll’s latest State of Digital Advertising Report reveals two pivotal shifts shaping: digital ad demand is rebounding and generative AI is having a major impact on on consumer discovery behaviors. Some of the findings include: 

• Display retargeting CPMs narrowed their year-over-year decline to just 3% in August, a sharp improvement from an 18% drop in Q2. 
• Display prospecting CPMs improved from 31% below last year in Q2 to 14% below in early Q3. 
• Traffic from AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to U.S. retail sites surged 4,700% YoY. Over half of consumers say they’re turning to AI for gift ideas, product research, and deal hunting.

Takeoff & landing

• WPP’s healthcare agency CMI Media opened up a Paris office in a bid to accelerate its global growth strategy, naming Aurélie Rizzo as global director. The move couldn’t be better timed as the possibility grows in the U.S. that pharmaceutical advertising could be curtailed by the U.S. government. 
• Interpublic Group’s Acxiom struck a deal with commerce data platform Attain to make the latter’s audience segments available to IPG agencies as part of Acxiom’s curated data offering. The deal includes purchase data, which Attain said is updated daily from 10,00 merchants.
• Account wins: WPP expanded its remit with lawn care brand TruGreen, picking up media AOR duties and expanding its existing relationship with VML … Publicis expanded its remit with German supermarket chain Aldi to global media AOR duties, and will create a dedicated unit to servicing the client, called Aldi One … Havas retained media duties for the BBC … Omnicom’s PHD won global media AOR duties for Australian snack firm Intersnack following a review.

Direct quote

“What you’ll find, in my experience with a lot of agencies, is they build for scale. They don’t always build for expertise … We obviously appreciate the process and rigor of getting large advertising campaigns to market, and would never make any sacrifices in regards to the quality of our work. But we just noticed that org design is one of the reasons why agencies struggle to be agile and can’t move faster.”

—Jordan Bortolotti, president of Salt Media, which is expanding beyond its Toronto roots into the U.S.

Speed reading

• Krystal Scanlon covered the latest developments in the future of TikTok in the U.S., as marketers and agencies are still uneasy about what form it will take. 
• Jim Cooper represented Digiday at DMexco last week, moderating discussions with four major media executives there. Here’s a roundup of his conversations at the global digital marketing and media conference. 
• If you were unable to attend last week’s fall installment of the Digiday Publishing Summit, you’re in luck, as Sara Guaglione captured the most interesting conversation themes at the event. Hint: declining referral traffic continues to be a problem.