The Trade Desk’s Zoë Mann: Publishers Find New Leverage as Outcomes Beat Cheap Reach
RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CALIF. — Cheap reach once had the advantage. Social platforms and walled gardens held the logged-in relationships with consumers, and low-cost impressions were easy to justify. Then AI began flooding the internet with content that fewer people trust.
That shift is handing new leverage to premium publishers, according to The Trade Desk’s Zoë Mann. Her advice to buyers is to measure what a media investment actually delivers.
“You start to have distrust with what you’re actually engaging with. I think that is empowering a resurgence in the value of news providers and other brands that we have historic credible trust with,” Mann, VP for Inventory Partnerships at The Trade Desk, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at Beet Retreat LA.
Publishers gain power
Premium publishers now have logged-in relationships with their own audiences, which lets them make the same first-party data case that social networks and walled gardens once made. Mann noted that they are pairing it with third-party measurement.
“They’re leveraging the first party data of their quality users, marrying that with third party measurement, and actually controlling their own destiny of how their content has curated the audiences that they bring,” Mann said. “They’re not grading their own homework.”
Credit the whole team
Last touch attribution hands all the credit to the retailer or the checkout moment. Mann sees it as one way to measure ROAS, but a narrow basis for decisions. She turned to her four-year-old, who has just started playing organized sports, to make the point.
“We don’t give him credit when he scores the goal. We give the whole team credit because it takes all of them kicking the ball down the field to score that goal,” Mann said. “There should be no difference in how we think about performance and measurement for brands.”
Brand and performance together
Mann doesn’t think marketers have to choose between brand and performance. A purchase decision reflects everything a shopper encountered on the way to it, from a billboard on the freeway to products on a grocery shelf.
“What you decided to pick at the end of the transaction or at your add to cart moment is a mix of everything that you’ve discovered throughout the entire purchasing journey,” Mann said. Brand, she added, shapes the value people place on a product and also their willingness to buy it because they trust it.
Quality over price
Asked what marketers and publishers at the retreat should do differently, Mann returned to measurement and the value it unlocks.
“I’m a really big believer that price isn’t the only thing that matters. Quality matters. If you’re able to bring advertisers more revenue because there are more purchases or more results, then they’re going to reinvest that money into more outcome-based measurement and outcome-based advertising solutions, which is only going to continue to fund the wonderful industry that we work in,” Mann said. “So outcomes versus cheap.”
RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CALIF. — Cheap reach once had the advantage. Social platforms and walled gardens held the logged-in relationships with consumers, and low-cost impressions were easy to justify. Then AI began flooding the internet with content that fewer people trust.
That shift is handing new leverage to premium publishers, according to The Trade Desk’s Zoë Mann. Her advice to buyers is to measure what a media investment actually delivers.
“You start to have distrust with what you’re actually engaging with. I think that is empowering a resurgence in the value of news providers and other brands that we have historic credible trust with,” Mann, VP for Inventory Partnerships at The Trade Desk, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at Beet Retreat LA.
Publishers gain power
Premium publishers now have logged-in relationships with their own audiences, which lets them make the same first-party data case that social networks and walled gardens once made. Mann noted that they are pairing it with third-party measurement.
“They’re leveraging the first party data of their quality users, marrying that with third party measurement, and actually controlling their own destiny of how their content has curated the audiences that they bring,” Mann said. “They’re not grading their own homework.”
Credit the whole team
Last touch attribution hands all the credit to the retailer or the checkout moment. Mann sees it as one way to measure ROAS, but a narrow basis for decisions. She turned to her four-year-old, who has just started playing organized sports, to make the point.
“We don’t give him credit when he scores the goal. We give the whole team credit because it takes all of them kicking the ball down the field to score that goal,” Mann said. “There should be no difference in how we think about performance and measurement for brands.”
Brand and performance together
Mann doesn’t think marketers have to choose between brand and performance. A purchase decision reflects everything a shopper encountered on the way to it, from a billboard on the freeway to products on a grocery shelf.
“What you decided to pick at the end of the transaction or at your add to cart moment is a mix of everything that you’ve discovered throughout the entire purchasing journey,” Mann said. Brand, she added, shapes the value people place on a product and also their willingness to buy it because they trust it.
Quality over price
Asked what marketers and publishers at the retreat should do differently, Mann returned to measurement and the value it unlocks.
“I’m a really big believer that price isn’t the only thing that matters. Quality matters. If you’re able to bring advertisers more revenue because there are more purchases or more results, then they’re going to reinvest that money into more outcome-based measurement and outcome-based advertising solutions, which is only going to continue to fund the wonderful industry that we work in,” Mann said. “So outcomes versus cheap.”
