The emerging world of performance attribution promises to let marketers see when a consumer’s exposure to an ad led to desired brand outcomes, like sign-ups or even purchases.

But the world of data underpinning the execution is still coming together. Lana Busignani fears that, for many marketers, it may be too piecemeal.

“A lot of players in the digital publisher space have been offering measurement to their advertiser community as an add-on to … their service,” the EVP of US analytics at media measurement house Nielsen tells Beet.TV in this video interview.

“They’re very helpful for optimising within the properties of that publisher. Publishers are wading into the water and demanding that as well. They want to prove their value relative to other offerings and they want a comparable measurement as well.

“(But) what advertisers are really asking us for is, how do they measure comparably across the walled gardens?”

Busignani suggests that creates the need for technology which can understand not only whether an ad seen through a specific publisher led to a brand outcome, but how exposures to ads from across the whole universe of sources join up.

That is why “identity graph” technology and attribution software have become so hot in 2019.

Busignani says the technology connects brands’ own sales and outcome data back to ad exposure.

“In terms of the walled gardens, we also have integrations where we work with them collaboratively and we’re able to measure that from within the walled garden in a space that’s Nielsen-specific so that we are really managing that and responsible for it,” she adds.

“But we’re working very much in collaboration with those publishers to be able to measure accurately and then bring it out for comparison.”

This video is part of a series of interviews conducted during Advertising Week New York, 2019.  This series is co-production of Beet.TV and Advertising Week.   The series is sponsored by Roundel, a Target company.  Please see more videos from Advertising Week right here