CANNES – Strolling down the Croisette a few weeks ago, Attain Co-founder and CEO Brian Mandelbaum received one overwhelming message: outcomes are everything.
For the head of the consumer transaction data analytics company head, that represents a fundamental shift from just a year ago.
“I’ve been walking around Cannes for the past five days, and I was here a year ago and we were talking about outcomes, but if you walk the Croisette, you see plastered all over the place: Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes, outcomes,” Mandelbaum told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. “That’s what the marketer cares about.”
This shift toward measurable results aligns perfectly with Attain’s integration into PMG’s recently announced Alli Marketplace, an app exchange that embeds partner technologies directly into marketing workflows. For Attain, which brings purchase data from millions of consumers representing billions in sales, the partnership represents a new level of integration.
Beyond modular solutions
Mandelbaum describes PMG’s Alli OS as “a game changer” for how it weaves together data from different technology providers across measurement, context, delivery, and targeting.
“What we do at Attain is really bring the data of millions of consumers purchasing every single day, sharing billions of dollars in sales outcome data into every element,” he said. “That doesn’t mean just like measurement. It means in planning, in buying, in activation—all of those things are not modular. It is completely an overhaul of a marketing OS.”
The Alli Marketplace, unveiled during Cannes, functions as an integrated app exchange built directly into PMG’s existing marketing operating system. Unlike traditional partner directories, it allows marketers to test and activate new tools with a single click without leaving the platform.
Contextual meets commerce
Attain’s approach to contextual advertising ties directly to sales outcomes — a connection that has often been missing in contextual strategies.
“We think about contextual as an element to what the ultimate outcome should be, and that is a sale,” Mandelbaum said. “But how do you deliver a sale if you’re not triggering the right consumer with the right emotion and ultimately the right attention?”
Through partnerships within the Alli ecosystem, such as with Mobian, Attain can show in real-time whether contextual placements actually drive sales lift. Mandelbaum calls this capability “not only a marketer’s best friend, but a CFO’s best friend.”
Accountability is balance
When asked about balancing performance and branding, Mandelbaum rejected the premise entirely.
“For us, it’s not about the balance of performance and branding, it’s about accountability,” he said. “We believe that upper funnel, brand media, huge emotional trigger moments are going to be equally as important as performance media. But there has to be accountability.”
This accountability focuses on a simple question: are marketing investments generating more profits? The technology infrastructure now exists to answer that question at scale.
“The data is here. The technology has progressed to a place where artificial intelligence, generative AI, machine learning can actually predict at scale a measured impact for all marketing needs,” Mandelbaum said. “And that’s why everybody cares about outcomes.”
