SAN JUAN, PR – As connected TV (CTV) continues its rapid growth trajectory, brands are increasingly focused on tying advertising spend to measurable business outcomes.
Speaking to David Kaplan following a panel appearance at February’s Beet Retreat San Juan 2025 conference in Puerto Rico , Damian Garbaccio, chief commercial and marketing officer at Affinity Solutions, emphasized the importance of purchase data as the ultimate metric for advertising effectiveness.
“Affinity Solutions is the consumer purchase insights company,” Garbaccio said. “Our tagline is ‘we are what happens.’ That is because we see that last bit of the action, which is the purchase.”
With major partnerships including Disney Advertising and Netflix, Affinity Solutions positions itself at the intersection of CTV’s expanding audience reach and brands’ demand for return on investment validation.
“There’s a lot of excitement, there’s a lot of eyeballs moving to CTV,” Garbaccio noted. “There is a huge demand from brands as well as those media companies to make sure that advertising they’re spending on CTV, the ROI is positive.”
Addressing media fragmentation
While acknowledging that media fragmentation remains a significant challenge in the advertising ecosystem, Garbaccio highlighted purchase data as a unifying metric that cuts through the complexity.
“Having a de facto core purchase metric is the first step—a known, did a person accomplish an outcome or a transaction?” he said.
The investment from CTV platforms in measurement capabilities is also driving progress. “We’ve seen a ton of that, and that’s going to not only solve and help brand problems, but they’re really rising to the occasion because brands are not just going to spend money willy-nilly over a lot of media without understanding the outcome,” Garbaccio said.
Real-time insights driving optimization
For effective CTV measurement, Garbaccio emphasized the critical nature of real-time data, which Affinity Solutions refers to as “recency.”
“Real-time data allows you to understand that fluid purchase and optimize across that whole journey as opposed to an episodic at the end of it, last click,” he said, noting how consumer purchasing patterns can vary significantly depending on context. “You might buy one product as an impulse, but when you go with your family, you buy it at a Costco.”
While purchase data isn’t the only variable in outcomes measurement, Garbaccio maintained its fundamental importance: “The best proxy for a purchase is a purchase. And that’s what we have. That data is critical.”
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