There’s a structural shift happening in how companies use advertising to grow. Instead of optimizing for reach or impressions, advertisers are increasingly allocating spend based on measurable business outcomes like revenue and customer acquisition. We call this the Outcomes Era.
But as that shift accelerates, performance is increasingly defined by how outcomes are measured, rather than where you spend. And that’s where things get complicated.
As more budgets move into performance channels, the systems measuring those outcomes are becoming harder to see inside. At that point, you have to ask yourself, “Can I trust how performance is being measured?” Because whoever controls measurement ultimately defines the terms of performance.
The way things play out in the next few years will determine whether the future of performance advertising is transparent and accountable or increasingly opaque.
Like any major shift, it comes with tradeoffs. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
The good: growth is becoming accountable
For most of advertising history, growth was measured indirectly.
Marketers bought reach, frequency, impressions and then tried to infer outcomes. The connection between spend and revenue was often blurry at best, fictional at worst.
Today, that’s changing. Across the board, there is a clear orientation toward outcome-based advertising. More budgets are being tied directly to measurable business results like sales, revenue, and customer acquisition. And importantly, more channels can now support that shift.
TV is the most obvious example. What was once a purely top-of-funnel, probabilistic channel is now increasingly connected to outcomes. Advertisers can measure conversions, tie spend to revenue, and optimize accordingly.
That changes how TV fits into the growth stack, with a growing focus on measurable, outcome-driven performance. Growth is becoming more scientific, accountable, and aligned with how businesses actually operate.
That’s unequivocally good.
The bad: transparency is under attack
At the same time, there’s a counterforce moving in the opposite direction. As more dollars flow into performance channels, the incentives to control (and obscure) measurement increase.
Walled gardens continue to reinforce their walls. Independent platforms, in many cases, behave similarly. As a result, there’s limited visibility into how decisions are made and how attribution is assigned.
Even platforms that position themselves as transparent are not immune to scrutiny. The standard for transparency is rising, and the industry is increasingly skeptical of anything that can’t be verified independently.
This creates a fundamental tension that only compounds with time. On one hand, advertisers are demanding accountability. On the other, the systems they rely on are becoming harder to see inside.
When you can’t see the underlying mechanics, the only option you have is to trust that they’re telling the truth. But in a system where billions of dollars are at stake, “trust me” is not a sufficient answer.
The ugly: a fight for control of the system
This is where things get more existential. If performance advertising becomes the dominant model, and all signs point in that direction, then the question becomes, “Who controls the measurement of growth?”
Because whoever controls measurement, controls budget allocation. And whoever controls budget allocation, controls the market.
If opacity wins, platforms become the arbiters of truth and advertisers lose the ability to independently validate performance. Optimization happens inside closed loops, with no external verification.
When budget decisions are increasingly dictated by systems that cannot be audited, “performance” becomes whatever the platform says it is.
That’s the ugly outcome. You’re no longer optimizing your business. Rather, you’re optimizing to a version of reality you can’t verify.
What can advertisers do in the face of opacity?
This is the practical question. While the industry debates transparency, operators still need to make decisions. So when reported outcomes can’t be trusted, the only option is to test them. That makes incrementality testing the fail-safe.
If a channel claims to drive performance, you should be able to prove it by removing it. Run holdout tests. Go dark in specific regions. Pause spend and observe what happens to your core business metrics.
If conversions don’t drop, you’ve learned something important. If they do, you’ve validated impact. This is the closest thing we have to a ground truth in an increasingly complex system.
When all else fails, apply the scientific method. Because no matter how sophisticated the platform, or how compelling the dashboard, the only question that matters is: Did this drive incremental growth?
We are living in a world where most advertising is judged by its ability to produce measurable outcomes. More budgets are flowing into that model and more technology is being built around it, but the infrastructure underneath it is still being defined.
The evolution of growth channels in 2026 will ideally be defined by the good, but only if we can keep the bad and the ugly in check.
Inside Performance Advertising with Jason Fairchild delivers unfiltered insights, strategic perspective, and hard truths from inside the evolving world of adtech—cutting through the noise to focus on what really drives outcomes. Subscribe here.
