Advertising’s Shift to Performance Media: 3 Ways to Get It Right

In recent years the digital advertising model truly has been broken. Ad fraud has skyrocketed, with bad actors and scammers engaging in click and impression fraud, ad stacking, domain spoofing, the use of bots and more. This has translated into unprecedented challenges for enterprise marketers, preventing them from accurately measuring digital advertising ROI and performance or even reaching the right target audiences.

In late 2023, as this chaos proliferated, our team defined our mission: To break the mold and deliver real data, real results, and invaluable reach for our clients to real people. This continues to be our mission today. But even as advertising is (thankfully) turning the corner, challenges still remain.

With IAB recently reporting that pressure to achieve ROI is the biggest driver behind today’s big brand shift to performance advertising – which is characterized by accurate tracking, measurement, and results -- we're sharing our checklist for those looking to embrace this fast-growing advertising strategy. These insights, compiled in collaboration with our Director of Client Services Chris Lelles, will empower you to gain approval for increased spend for CTV advertising and other performance marketing initiatives:

1. Improved Trackability and Measurement to Demonstrate Real Results: According to the IAB study, “this year there seems to be an accelerated push for more measurable results as platforms become more fragmented” across the advertising landscape. To optimize advertising measurement, our perspective is that today’s brands need to lean into digital. But here’s the catch: you need a trusted agency partner to guide you in your media choices while assisting you in avoiding the pitfalls of ad fraud and poor audience data.

 

The reality is that digital channels offer better tracking than direct mail, standard TV, or radio. People use unique phone numbers to track calls, but there are no clicks or opens to measure activity across those channels. With OMI’s custom audience services, however, you can track activity across multiple digital channels (not just advertising), whereas if you build an audience inside LinkedIn, that tracking is not available.

As an example of the measurement capabilities of performance media, connected TV (CTV) is leading the way (check out our recent blog on the rise of CTV advertising) by offering:

• Conversion tracking: Identify website visitors and determine which ones made a purchase after viewing an ad.

• Footfall attribution: Measure how many viewers visited a physical location following an ad exposure.

Measurement capabilities like this make it easier to calculate ROI and refine future campaigns, ensuring that every dollar delivers maximum impact.

2. Precision Targeting: Precision audience targeting is a key performance advertising advantage, but unlocking its full potential requires not only strategic targeting skills but also assembling and leveraging the right audience data. OMI is a recognized leader in this area, with Fortune 2000 firms and other organizations already turning to us and our massive Living File® B2B database -- consisting of 145MM+ manager-, director-, and professional-level and above contacts with email/HEM, social URL, and other attributes -- to perform custom audience building. Our audiences can be used for media activation, email acquisition marketing, CTV, programmatic, social, and other omni-channel campaigns.

We deliver the largest reach into the SMB marketplace with our data while also offering high match rates to Trade Desk and the top social platforms, with up to 15 total platforms available for matching. Our aim is to provide our clients with custom, highly-targeted audiences made up of comprehensive prospect profiles that can be leveraged to elevate digital advertising personalization, relevance, and ultimately, campaign ROI.

3. Increased Transparency. Bots and ad fraud continue to haunt marketers, presenting misleading performance metrics. As part of our performance media services, our team actively works to eliminate non-human activity or non-human inclusion within our audiences, meaning that your performance metrics will no longer reflect “fake” activity driven by bots.

 

The bottom line is, when campaign outcomes don’t reflect reality, advertisers lack insight into whether their ad spend and impressions are being wasted on bots. In the end, it means marketers pay for advertising that offers little to no value, resulting in enormous financial implications. 

Speaking of financial implications, when seeking out a performance media partnership, one of the most critical areas of transparency surrounds payouts. Because you invest substantial resources in campaigns, it's crucial to understand precisely where every slice of the allocated budget goes and how the campaign is being run—from the advertising platforms to the sites serving the ads and every partner or player who touches those ads across the ecosystem.

Many times, these payouts aren’t equitable or favorable for advertisers. That’s why you must ask your media activation or performance marketing partner for detailed specifics about their processes. At OMI, you can rest assured that we are committed to full transparency.

Data doesn’t lie, and the IAB study revealed that more marketers are turning to performance media in 2025. When they get it right, they are able to regain their ability to accurately measure and report results, achieve greater transparency with regard to results and payouts, and engage their most optimal target audiences. Please reach out to our team for more insights into performance media and how we can support your success this year.