The North Shore of Long Island played host to a dazzling convergence of measurement minds this July as IAB welcomed 100 industry leaders to the 2025 Measurement Leadership Summit. Set in the grand halls and sun-drenched patios of The Mansion at Glen Cove, the event embraced a Roaring Twenties theme—feathers, fringe, and all—but the conversations were firmly focused on the future.
The theme, “Driving to Outcomes,” was more than a slogan. It framed a day of active collaboration, candid exchange, and passionate debate. Attendees weren’t spectators—they were vocal participants and co-creators, lending their voice, experience, and vision to help redefine how the industry measures performance in a fragmented, privacy-forward world.
From structured breakouts to open-floor debates, the event tackled key measurement challenges with clarity and urgency. Below are five major takeaways that will shape IAB’s priorities moving forward:
1. MMM Needs to Mature—Fast
Traditional MMM has reached its limit. The call to modernize is urgent, with industry leaders demanding more granularity across inputs: separating Advanced TV from linear, capturing retail media, podcast, audio, digital out-of-home, and gaming as distinct categories, and accounting for ad formats and creative variables.
But modernizing MMM means going beyond just spend, conversions, and ROI. It must capture attention signals, behavioral patterns, exposure sequences, contextual impact, and the nuanced roles of content, device, format and channel. It must also support the triangulation of MMM with other techniques—like incrementality testing and multiple attribution views—to paint a clearer, more connected picture of performance.
The industry needs to come together to create a modernization framework that supports taxonomy alignment, ad format categorization, publisher-level detail and strategy approaches. Cross-stakeholder collaboration will be critical.
2. Define What Measurement Should Measure
Marketers are flooded with metrics—but few reflect what actually drives business outcomes. The industry must align on the metrics and dimensions that matter: attention, user engagement, lift, ROI, quality, and creative impact.
Campaigns are more than inputs and impressions. Measurement must include insights around user journey, market-level dynamics, and even geographic differences. Brand health, ad stock, and long-term impact also need to factor in.
And critically, the conversation must move away from last-touch attribution. Stakeholders called for greater transparency around assisted attribution, including weighted contribution models that reflect the real complexity of modern consumer journeys across paid, owned and earned.
The industry needs to align on a shared set of outcome-based KPIs and clear methods for capturing them across diverse environments.
3. Standardize, Simplify, Scale
Fragmentation continues to plague cross-channel measurement. Disparate IDs, inconsistent data handoffs, and limited interoperability create unnecessary friction. Campaign activation and measurement must be better connected—from taxonomy setup to performance reporting.
Organizations are often duplicating efforts or misaligning setup from strategy, leading to lost data and misattribution. To scale measurement innovation, standardization must start upstream.
The industry needs to embrace simplified data structures, harmonized tagging practices, and broader adoption of tools that bridge technical gaps—including IAB Tech Lab solutions like CAPI (Common Ad Platform Interface) and ACIF (Ad Creative ID Framework), which provide the connective tissue between platforms and performance.
4. Operationalize Privacy, Data, and AI
AI is transforming how marketers model, optimize, and report—but not without caveats. It needs clearly defined inputs, structured taxonomies, and real human oversight to be effective. Privacy regulations and responsible data governance are critical foundations that cannot be ignored.
When used well, AI can accelerate insight discovery, automate reporting, and surface new optimization opportunities. But it cannot replace strategic thinking or compensate for broken processes.
The industry needs practical guidance and shared best practices for deploying AI in measurement and media planning, while embedding privacy-by-design principles and ensuring data compliance and integrity across systems.
5. Real Change Requires Real Collaboration
Throughout the Summit, one theme echoed across every conversation: alignment. Cross-functional, cross-organizational, and cross-industry collaboration is essential. Measurement doesn’t exist in isolation—it touches finance, legal, product, ad operations, sales, analytics, media, marketing and creative
Bringing CFOs and marketers into alignment, enabling buy-side and sell-side cooperation, and creating shared definitions of value are non-negotiables.
The industry needs to foster stronger partnerships across roles and organizations, with shared education tracks, interoperability initiatives, and unified attribution strategies that reflect today’s dynamic ecosystem.
Turning Insights Into Action
As the champagne flutes clinked and the sun dipped behind the mansion, one thing was clear: this wasn’t just a one-day affair. The insights and urgency of the Summit are already informing IAB’s roadmap for 2026 and beyond.
From the evolving role of AI to the redefinition of MMM, from new privacy demands to signal loss and standardization—one message rang through the halls: measurement can’t evolve in isolation. It requires engagement, partnership, and collaboration across departments, companies, and the industry at large.
And for those who believe in transforming measurement from the inside out—and want to engage, collaborate, and help write the next chapter, email us at [email protected].
