Horizon Media’s Maikel O’Hanlon: Performance has Moved Up the Funnel
The bottom of the funnel is getting crowded. Finding efficiencies against in-market demand is increasingly expensive, CFOs are scrutinizing every dollar regardless of channel, and measurement has matured enough to connect upper funnel exposure to downstream conversion. Three forces are pushing performance sensibilities into territory that once belonged exclusively to brand.
“The upper funnel starts to look for demand that isn’t in market but can be turned into incremental demand. That’s historically been an upper funnel job,” Maikel O’Hanlon, svp of Performance Media and Innovation at Horizon Media, told Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein. “CFOs are looking at every dollar spent and asking the same question, whether it’s a 30-second streaming ad or a search dollar: what is this dollar doing for my bottom line business?”
That question is reshaping how clients define performance itself.
Incrementality is the new performance
When clients ask for performance today, they are asking about outcomes that wouldn’t have happened without media. New customers, incremental revenue, lifetime value, and margin are the metrics that matter.
“The designs that we put in place with our media planning to architect that type of incremental focus ends up shaping a lot of what we do,” O’Hanlon said. “It’s the way in which we structure our inputs from an audience and data approach, the way that we build cohorts and segments that are intended to represent higher value customers.”
Smart reach replaces demo-based buying
CTV and online video were designed around reach. Making them accountable for business outcomes requires rethinking the planning logic from the start. Horizon is not buying on broad demographics or GRPs.
“We are structuring campaigns to have real intentional design with audiences and cohorts and segments that we believe from a predictive basis are going to build on strong seed intelligence,” O’Hanlon said.
The goal is to prove upfront that the audience logic will manifest in performance returns, not demonstrate it after the fact.
It takes a triumvirate
No single measurement approach is sufficient. O’Hanlon describes a three-part system. Geo lift studies, holdouts, and match market tests provide confident causal evidence but are costly and slow to set up. Attribution readouts are fast but sometimes overconfident. MMM models draw on years of spend and sales data to inform investment decisions going in.
“The optimization happens while we’re in market with attribution readouts and the experiments that are also happening side by side. That’s the way in which we accomplish incrementality confirmation in a fulsome and responsible way,” O’Hanlon said.
Brand blurs but doesn’t disappear
As upper funnel activity takes on performance characteristics, the line between brand and performance becomes harder to draw. O’Hanlon thinks it blurs rather than collapses entirely.
“Brand efforts are focused on creating connection, on building affinity, on building interest, and performance is about translating demand into returns that are good for the bottom line,” O’Hanlon said. “The brand function will still always be about storytelling and that’s where I think that line ends up persisting even as the funnel collapses to a degree.”
You’re watching “Code and Craft: Redefining Creativity for Performance”, a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Equativ For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
The bottom of the funnel is getting crowded. Finding efficiencies against in-market demand is increasingly expensive, CFOs are scrutinizing every dollar regardless of channel, and measurement has matured enough to connect upper funnel exposure to downstream conversion. Three forces are pushing performance sensibilities into territory that once belonged exclusively to brand.
“The upper funnel starts to look for demand that isn’t in market but can be turned into incremental demand. That’s historically been an upper funnel job,” Maikel O’Hanlon, svp of Performance Media and Innovation at Horizon Media, told Beet.TV Editorial Director Lisa Granatstein. “CFOs are looking at every dollar spent and asking the same question, whether it’s a 30-second streaming ad or a search dollar: what is this dollar doing for my bottom line business?”
That question is reshaping how clients define performance itself.
Incrementality is the new performance
When clients ask for performance today, they are asking about outcomes that wouldn’t have happened without media. New customers, incremental revenue, lifetime value, and margin are the metrics that matter.
“The designs that we put in place with our media planning to architect that type of incremental focus ends up shaping a lot of what we do,” O’Hanlon said. “It’s the way in which we structure our inputs from an audience and data approach, the way that we build cohorts and segments that are intended to represent higher value customers.”
Smart reach replaces demo-based buying
CTV and online video were designed around reach. Making them accountable for business outcomes requires rethinking the planning logic from the start. Horizon is not buying on broad demographics or GRPs.
“We are structuring campaigns to have real intentional design with audiences and cohorts and segments that we believe from a predictive basis are going to build on strong seed intelligence,” O’Hanlon said.
The goal is to prove upfront that the audience logic will manifest in performance returns, not demonstrate it after the fact.
It takes a triumvirate
No single measurement approach is sufficient. O’Hanlon describes a three-part system. Geo lift studies, holdouts, and match market tests provide confident causal evidence but are costly and slow to set up. Attribution readouts are fast but sometimes overconfident. MMM models draw on years of spend and sales data to inform investment decisions going in.
“The optimization happens while we’re in market with attribution readouts and the experiments that are also happening side by side. That’s the way in which we accomplish incrementality confirmation in a fulsome and responsible way,” O’Hanlon said.
Brand blurs but doesn’t disappear
As upper funnel activity takes on performance characteristics, the line between brand and performance becomes harder to draw. O’Hanlon thinks it blurs rather than collapses entirely.
“Brand efforts are focused on creating connection, on building affinity, on building interest, and performance is about translating demand into returns that are good for the bottom line,” O’Hanlon said. “The brand function will still always be about storytelling and that’s where I think that line ends up persisting even as the funnel collapses to a degree.”
You’re watching “Code and Craft: Redefining Creativity for Performance”, a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Equativ For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
