GUEST DISPATCH
Howard Diamond: Measurement is now a growth lever
A lot of the clients we talk with are building their 2027 plans right now, and our advice is the same for almost all of them: put measurement at the center.
Google frames it as data strength: how complete and connected your first-party data is when it reaches its bidding systems. Google’s October Demand Gen update had no new ad formats. It was built around data strength. By Google’s own analysis, advertisers who set up its tag gateway record over 20% more Demand Gen conversions on average.
I believe clean, connected first-party data is the new infrastructure bar. The algorithms learn from the signals you feed back to them. If you want AI bidding and value-based bidding to work, you need the right measurement framework underneath. Weak signals train the platform in the wrong direction, and a new campaign type won’t fix that.
We’ve been talking about this since Google’s Rethink ROI event in September, where our Chief Partnership Officer, Patrick Van Gorder, joined a panel on data strength. The event featured our work with StrataTech, where our proprietary propensity model scored each new lead’s likelihood to enroll from past CRM outcomes and fed that score to Google’s bidding. StrataTech’s lead-to-enrollment rate rose 72%, and its cost per enrollment fell 24%. The five steps that drove that result are in our write-up.
Measurement has shifted from a reporting task to a growth lever. As you plan for 2027, include an audit of the data you feed the ad platforms.
