Advertisers won’t get to correlate ad spending with actual business outcomes until they give intermediaries real-time sales data, says one major-agency ad exec.

Asked if advertising measurements like CPMs should be replaced by client-oriented metrics like actual sales, DigitasLBi media activation head Adam Shlachter agreed: “What we should be focusing on is the outcomes we want to achieve.”

But the industry is not there yet, Shlachter says. “If I can plan on that in real-time, that’s great. To date, that takes months, if not years. It’s looking back in the rear-view mirror.

“I can’t always get at sales data … they’re not giving that to me in real-time, today at least … so I need proxies, I need to know that some engagement led to some lift in something else that led to sales.”

We spoke with him at the Beet.TV Video Ad Fraud Leadership Summit where he was panelist, interviewed by Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Minds. You can find videos from the event here.