Shared from the perspective of Bradley Keefer, CRO at Keen
I recently attended the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, and if there was one consistent throughline across stages, hallways, and side conversations, it was this: the job of the CMO has fundamentally changed, and the systems supporting that role have not kept pace.
This was not a conference about incremental optimization. It was a conference about pressure.
Pressure to make decisions faster. Pressure to justify spend with confidence. Pressure to operate in an environment where consumer behavior is fragmenting, media is fragmenting, data is fragmenting, and expectations are somehow converging on one person. The CMO.
Viewed through Keen’s lens, the industry is not short on tools, vendors, or innovation. It is short on coherence. Below is how I would frame the state of the industry today if I were sitting in the CMO seat, with specific focus on where we think the industry is behind, what CMOs should be reconsidering now, and what is genuinely exciting about what comes next.
Measurement: Still the bottleneck, still the opportunity
Marketing measurement dominated the conversation at IAB, and for good reason. Despite years of progress, the same core issues remain unresolved.
First, fragmentation is no longer just a technical inconvenience. It is a strategic liability. CMOs are allocating billions of dollars across channels that cannot be compared cleanly, consistently, or credibly. Linear, streaming, retail media, social, audio, and emerging formats all speak different measurement languages. The result is not nuance. It is noise.
Second, most measurement systems still optimize for explanation, not decision-making. Attribution explains credit. Incrementality proves causality. MMM explains historical impact. None of those, on their own, answer the question a CMO actually gets asked: what should I do next, and how confident should I be?
Third, emerging channels remain structurally underrepresented. CTV, audio, retail media, and newer digital formats routinely look inefficient not because they do not work, but because legacy measurement frameworks were never designed to understand them. When models fail to represent how consumers actually behave, spend predictably follows the model instead of the market.
From Keen’s perspective, this is not a call for yet another methodology. It is a call to re-anchor measurement around outcomes and decisions. Measurement that does not inform action fast enough is not conservative. It is risky.
Top challenges CMOs face today: Speed, confidence, and fragmented measurement
Listening to CMOs at IAB, the challenges were strikingly consistent, regardless of category.
Speed has collapsed planning cycles. The idea of six-month planning windows is gone. CMOs are being asked to make material reallocations in days or weeks, often with incomplete data, while still being held accountable for long-term brand health.
Confidence is eroding. When every platform reports success using its own logic, trust becomes the scarce resource. CMOs are not looking for perfect certainty, but they are desperate for directional confidence they can stand behind in a boardroom.
The role itself has expanded. Today’s CMO is also a Chief Growth Officer, Chief Data Translator, Chief AI Sponsor, and increasingly a proxy CIO. That expansion would be manageable if the underlying systems reduced complexity. Instead, they often add to it.
Perhaps most importantly, CMOs are stuck arbitrating between incompatible truths. Attribution says one thing. Incrementality tests say another. MMM says something else entirely. None are wrong, but none reconcile themselves.
If I were in the CMO seat, I would stop asking which model is right and start asking which decisions each model is allowed to influence. Clarity of role matters more than purity of methodology.
Where the industry is behind
From Keen’s vantage point, there are three areas where the industry is materially lagging reality.
The first is treating MMM as a report instead of an operating system. Too many organizations still run MMM annually or quarterly, treating it as a retrospective validation exercise. In a world of compressed decision cycles, that cadence is obsolete. Measurement must run at the speed decisions are made, or it will be ignored when it matters most.
The second is over-indexing on experimentation without context. Incrementality testing is essential, but isolated tests without a broader business model can mislead as easily as they inform. A two-week geo test cannot, on its own, represent national dynamics, competitive shifts, or macroeconomic pressure. Tests need a decision framework to live inside.
The third is confusing data volume with decision quality. More dashboards do not create more clarity. Without a unifying structure that ties signals to financial outcomes, additional data simply increases cognitive load on already overextended teams.
If I were a CMO today, what I’d reconsider about measurement and decision-making
First, I would explicitly separate measurement for learning from measurement for decisioning. Not every analysis needs to drive an immediate budget shift, and not every budget shift needs perfect causal proof. Being honest about which is which reduces internal friction and speeds action.
Second, I would demand that measurement ladders to financial outcomes, not proxy metrics. Awareness, attention, clicks, and conversions all matter, but only insofar as they explain revenue, margin, or growth. If a metric cannot be translated into business impact, it should not anchor major decisions.
Third, I would invest in systems that reconcile, not replace. The future is not attribution versus MMM versus incrementality. It is systems that understand how those signals complement each other and surface a coherent recommendation.
Finally, I would push hard on organizational trust. Tools do not fail in isolation. They fail when teams do not trust the outputs enough to act. Transparency, interpretability, and repeatability matter more than sophistication alone.
The most exciting takes on what comes next
Despite the challenges, the future discussed at IAB was genuinely energizing.
AI is beginning to shift from automation to orchestration. The promise is not faster reporting, but systems that ingest fragmented signals, normalize them, and surface decision-ready guidance. The winners will not be those who use the most AI, but those who apply it to reduce ambiguity.
Measurement standards are finally becoming a strategic conversation, not a technical one. Interoperability is no longer about compliance. It is about unlocking spend trapped by uncertainty. When standards create shared language, AI can actually compound value instead of amplifying chaos.
Marketing operating systems are emerging. The idea that MMM can evolve into a closed-loop system that forecasts outcomes, recommends allocations, and learns continuously is no longer theoretical. It is being built. This has profound implications for how agencies, platforms, and brands work together.
Finally, trust is becoming the true differentiator. In a world of infinite content, infinite targeting, and infinite optimization, the brands that win will be those that build trust with consumers and confidence with their own decision-makers. Measurement will not just prove performance. It will enable belief.
Closing thoughts: How CMOs can make better decisions under pressure
The most important takeaway from IAB was not that the industry lacks answers. It is that the questions have changed.
The future of marketing will not be defined by who measures the most precisely, but by who makes the best decisions under uncertainty. Keen’s belief is simple: better decisions come from probabilistic thinking, integrated signals, and systems designed for action, not explanation.
For CMOs navigating this moment, the opportunity is real. So is the pressure. The brands that emerge stronger will be the ones that stop trying to perfect the past and start building for the decisions they need to make next.
