RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CA – As the advertising industry grapples with budget pressure, rising channel complexity and an ever-widening tech stack, the familiar mandate to “do more with less” has become an exhausting refrain. At the Beet Retreat LA, Anna Grodecka-Grad, SVP of Global Client Services at StackAdapt, argued that the real challenge, and opportunity, lies in doing more of what matters, not simply asking teams to work harder.
“People talk about doing more with less, but what we should really focus on is doing more of the work that drives outcomes,” she told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan. That means identifying the highest-value jobs to be done, automating the rest and giving marketers more space for strategy, creativity and experimentation.
Turning buzzwords into real gains
Buzzwords like AI, automation and personalization often obscure more than they clarify, Grodecka-Grad said. The industry is oversaturated with jargon, but these capabilities become meaningful when applied to concrete problems.
She pointed to specific gains: workflow automation that frees hours previously spent on trafficking, tools that reduce planning time, and machine learning models that shorten “cold starts” so campaigns reach optimal performance sooner.
“It becomes tangible when you see that you suddenly have more time in your calendar,” she said.
Dynamic creative optimization, bulk-editing features and smarter data management are among the capabilities she sees delivering value by making ads more relevant and reducing consumer irritation.
‘Growth paradox’: More tools, less connection
Despite unprecedented access to data and technology, many marketers feel less connected to customers and less confident in their insights. Grodecka-Grad called this the industry’s “growth paradox.”
“Technology promised more connection and more effectiveness, but it often creates more fatigue, more silos and more complexity,” she said.
The proliferation of channels including email, programmatic video, CTV and retail media means marketers spend too much time orchestrating tools rather than building strategy. The solution, she argued, is not more platforms but better integration of the ones that already exist.
As adtech and martech converge, she said, marketers must ensure that systems such as forecasting, trafficking and measurement talk to each other so insights flow in real time. Incrementality and other measurement results, for instance, shouldn’t require weeks of waiting.
Measurement’s biggest issue: Defining success
Measurement remains the “elephant in the room,” Kaplan noted. Grodecka-Grad said the biggest hurdle isn’t the abundance of attribution solutions. It’s aligning on what success actually means.
Marketers, agencies, CMOs and CFOs often use different metrics and proxies. Bringing those definitions closer to real business outcomes is critical, she said.
She emphasized the value of cross-channel attribution, which highlights assisted conversions, common conversion paths and the interplay among channels. With a holistic view, marketers can optimize in real time without pausing campaigns for lengthy experiments.
“We see so much success with our cross-channel attribution,” she said, noting it helps refine investments and inform future campaigns.
Better mantra: Smart data, smart insights
Asked to rewrite the industry cliché, Grodecka-Grad returned to her core theme: “Do more of what matters, what drives business outcomes and brand growth.”
She also pushed back against the industry’s obsession with “big data,” advocating instead for smart data: insights that directly tie to business results rather than massive datasets that require enormous resources to maintain.
“You probably need less data than you think,” she said. “But you need the right type of data.”
