MIAMI — The advertising industry has been measuring digital campaigns the same way for years, clinging to metrics that create more noise than insight. Meanwhile, brands and agencies struggle to separate meaningful signals from the clutter of KPIs that fail to connect with actual business outcomes.
“We’re living in a time and a place where there are tons of mixed signals and KPIs that are being given to agencies and to brands direct,” said Lance Wolder, head of commercial strategy and marketing at PadSquad, in this video interview with Beet.TV at POSSIBLE 2026.
“And that kind of noise makes it a lot harder for brands and their agencies to be able to shift through and find the things that really matter.”
Rethinking planning and creative through behavioral signals
The integration of offline behavioral data into media planning represents a departure from the “clumsy digital KPIs” that have dominated the industry, according to Wolder. Rather than relying on proxies for consumer interest, advertisers can now understand how media exposure translates into physical-world actions.
This capability arrives as digital video advertising continues its ascent. According to eMarketer’s Digital Video Forecast and Trends Q2 2026 report, connected TV upfront ad spending in the U.S. is projected to reach $17.73 billion this year, surpassing primetime linear TV upfront spending of $16.98 billion for the first time.
“From a planning perspective, we’re not just looking at the clumsy digital KPIs that have become the norm and have created all this messy signal,” Wolder said. “But we now have the opportunity to understand this new collapsed funnel in a more meaningful way and inform how we show up, where we show up and why we’re showing up for consumers.”
Small creative tweaks yield outsized results
Research conducted by PadSquad in partnership with OM Media trials examined how minor adjustments to creative execution could improve campaign outcomes. The year-long study tested more than 4,000 individuals in live environments to understand the impact of creative modifications.
The findings suggest that advertisers need not reinvent their creative assets entirely to see meaningful improvements. Simple adaptations to existing work can produce substantial gains in consumer response.
“What we found was whether it was just a simple adapting the way that the creative looked or adding interactivity as a component of that ad, we were able to shift the purchase intent for that consumer by 3x by simply making a tweak to that creative,” Wolder said. “And it’s still the same core asset that was delivered by the agency. It’s just refined and reimagined a little bit for a new era of consumption.”
Interactive video challenges attention orthodoxy
While attention metrics have gained currency across the industry, Wolder expressed skepticism about their predictive value for actual business outcomes. The real measure, in his view, lies in consumer behaviors rather than attention scores.
PadSquad reported 70% year-over-year growth in clients purchasing video advertising in January 2026, with a 57% increase in CTV spend specifically. The company attributes this growth to increased investment in interactive video streaming formats across desktop, mobile, and CTV.
“Attention doesn’t really signal whether or not somebody’s gonna go to a store or purchase a product. However, their behaviors do,” Wolder said. “What we’ve learned is that an interactive ad provides high consideration category brands the ability to offer more storytelling and more of a vehicle for them to connect with the consumer in a more meaningful way.”
