Measure What Actually Matters to Your Brand: Mutinex’s Mike Finnerty
CANNES, France – Marketing measurement has become very good at producing numbers. Whether those numbers explain what happened is another matter.
Mike Finnerty, president of Mutinex’s U.S. region, says advertisers need to make measurement part of the planning process instead of scrambling for answers after a campaign has been “dead and buried.”
In an interview with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Finnerty said marketers should focus on incremental growth rather than metrics that look impressive in presentations but leave the finance department unmoved.
“Everything else is a nice-to-have. It’s a proxy,” Finnerty said. “It doesn’t actually speak to the language of finance or actually growing the P&L for the business.”
Start measuring before the campaign ends
The best measurement programs begin with the campaign brief, Finnerty said. Brands and agencies should decide what they will execute, which data they will collect and how they will determine whether the investment moved the business forward.
That sounds obvious. So does checking the weather before holding an outdoor event. Yet both appear to remain occasional surprises at Cannes.
“When you think of measurement at major enterprises, it can’t be an afterthought,” Finnerty said.
Measurement should help marketers answer two basic questions: Did the campaign work? If not, what needs to change? Waiting until the campaign is over can turn measurement into an expensive exercise in explaining yesterday’s decisions.
AI accelerates the measurement race
Artificial intelligence is making campaign buying and optimization faster. Measurement now needs to keep pace without simply producing questionable answers at higher speed.
Finnerty sees analytical control shifting from media sellers toward buyers. Major publishers and platforms have built powerful targeting and measurement systems, but brands increasingly want an independent view of whether their spending generated incremental growth.
“I need to take more control of measurement myself,” Finnerty said, describing the attitude among advertisers.
Mutinex seeks to provide that independent assessment through an agentic approach. Its technology gives advertisers a view of incrementality that can be fed back into buying platforms to improve campaigns in real time.
The goal is to connect rapid automated buying with business outcomes, rather than letting an algorithm enthusiastically optimize a campaign toward a metric nobody remembers choosing.
More data can mean more disagreement
Kaplan noted that brands have more data than ever but often have less clarity about what it means. Finnerty agreed that it is a “huge problem,” though he argued that the problem isn’t necessarily a shortage of information.
“More data right now for most advertisers means more conflicting results,” Finnerty said.
Platforms may each offer their own return-on-investment calculations. Marketers then must decide which result is credible, which measurement method fits a particular situation and how any of it relates to the company’s actual performance.
Mutinex aims to serve as a single source of truth for advertisers hearing rosy assessments from Google, Meta and other platforms. A platform might report a return of five, six or eight times the investment. If the brand’s business results don’t support that claim, Finnerty said, it isn’t a defensible answer to take to the rest of the organization.
Digital media isn’t necessarily easiest to measure
Finnerty divided media into three measurement categories. Broad-reach channels can be comparatively easy to evaluate because their delivery data provides variation for models to examine. Linear television is one example.
Out-of-home advertising and sponsorships are more complicated. Their exposure can change with traffic patterns, attendance and event viewership. The industry needs better ways to express the media delivery or equivalent value of those executions, he said.
Digital performance media presents a different problem. It produces enormous amounts of data and offers highly refined targeting based on intent signals. Those strengths can make it difficult to determine whether an ad caused a purchase or merely found somebody who was already reaching for a credit card.
“You might just be finding people that are going to show up and buy anyway,” Finnerty said.
The challenge is separating an effective targeting algorithm from the incremental influence of the media, message and creative. An ad that locates an inevitable customer deserves some credit, perhaps, but not necessarily a parade.
Advertising ultimately has one job
Kaplan asked whether good measurement and business outcomes are always connected. Finnerty said they should be.
Publishers are becoming more interested in understanding advertisers’ goals and connecting platform activity with those goals, he said. That closer relationship can help media companies deliver advertising that creates value without becoming intrusive.
“At the end of the day, advertising is to grow businesses,” Finnerty said. “We want to sell ****, right?”
It may not be the most delicate description of marketing’s purpose. It is, however, admirably measurable.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Mutinex. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
CANNES, France – Marketing measurement has become very good at producing numbers. Whether those numbers explain what happened is another matter.
Mike Finnerty, president of Mutinex’s U.S. region, says advertisers need to make measurement part of the planning process instead of scrambling for answers after a campaign has been “dead and buried.”
In an interview with Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Finnerty said marketers should focus on incremental growth rather than metrics that look impressive in presentations but leave the finance department unmoved.
“Everything else is a nice-to-have. It’s a proxy,” Finnerty said. “It doesn’t actually speak to the language of finance or actually growing the P&L for the business.”
Start measuring before the campaign ends
The best measurement programs begin with the campaign brief, Finnerty said. Brands and agencies should decide what they will execute, which data they will collect and how they will determine whether the investment moved the business forward.
That sounds obvious. So does checking the weather before holding an outdoor event. Yet both appear to remain occasional surprises at Cannes.
“When you think of measurement at major enterprises, it can’t be an afterthought,” Finnerty said.
Measurement should help marketers answer two basic questions: Did the campaign work? If not, what needs to change? Waiting until the campaign is over can turn measurement into an expensive exercise in explaining yesterday’s decisions.
AI accelerates the measurement race
Artificial intelligence is making campaign buying and optimization faster. Measurement now needs to keep pace without simply producing questionable answers at higher speed.
Finnerty sees analytical control shifting from media sellers toward buyers. Major publishers and platforms have built powerful targeting and measurement systems, but brands increasingly want an independent view of whether their spending generated incremental growth.
“I need to take more control of measurement myself,” Finnerty said, describing the attitude among advertisers.
Mutinex seeks to provide that independent assessment through an agentic approach. Its technology gives advertisers a view of incrementality that can be fed back into buying platforms to improve campaigns in real time.
The goal is to connect rapid automated buying with business outcomes, rather than letting an algorithm enthusiastically optimize a campaign toward a metric nobody remembers choosing.
More data can mean more disagreement
Kaplan noted that brands have more data than ever but often have less clarity about what it means. Finnerty agreed that it is a “huge problem,” though he argued that the problem isn’t necessarily a shortage of information.
“More data right now for most advertisers means more conflicting results,” Finnerty said.
Platforms may each offer their own return-on-investment calculations. Marketers then must decide which result is credible, which measurement method fits a particular situation and how any of it relates to the company’s actual performance.
Mutinex aims to serve as a single source of truth for advertisers hearing rosy assessments from Google, Meta and other platforms. A platform might report a return of five, six or eight times the investment. If the brand’s business results don’t support that claim, Finnerty said, it isn’t a defensible answer to take to the rest of the organization.
Digital media isn’t necessarily easiest to measure
Finnerty divided media into three measurement categories. Broad-reach channels can be comparatively easy to evaluate because their delivery data provides variation for models to examine. Linear television is one example.
Out-of-home advertising and sponsorships are more complicated. Their exposure can change with traffic patterns, attendance and event viewership. The industry needs better ways to express the media delivery or equivalent value of those executions, he said.
Digital performance media presents a different problem. It produces enormous amounts of data and offers highly refined targeting based on intent signals. Those strengths can make it difficult to determine whether an ad caused a purchase or merely found somebody who was already reaching for a credit card.
“You might just be finding people that are going to show up and buy anyway,” Finnerty said.
The challenge is separating an effective targeting algorithm from the incremental influence of the media, message and creative. An ad that locates an inevitable customer deserves some credit, perhaps, but not necessarily a parade.
Advertising ultimately has one job
Kaplan asked whether good measurement and business outcomes are always connected. Finnerty said they should be.
Publishers are becoming more interested in understanding advertisers’ goals and connecting platform activity with those goals, he said. That closer relationship can help media companies deliver advertising that creates value without becoming intrusive.
“At the end of the day, advertising is to grow businesses,” Finnerty said. “We want to sell ****, right?”
It may not be the most delicate description of marketing’s purpose. It is, however, admirably measurable.
You’re watching The Beet.TV Leadership Sessions at Cannes Lions 2026, presented by Mutinex. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can find all of our coverage from Cannes Lions 2026 here.
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