Advertising’s billion-dollar elephant in the room has always been measurement. Brands spend staggering sums on media—global ad spend is expected to top $1 trillion this year—but confidence in measuring effectiveness lags far behind. Now, Affinity Solutions, the consumer purchase insights company, is trying to change that with the launch of the Outcomes Marketing Council, a new industry forum designed to elevate purchase-based metrics over proxies.

Why This Matters

For years, marketers have relied on impressions, clicks, and reach as stand-ins for effectiveness, while ROI often remained elusive. The Outcomes Marketing Council is positioning itself as a corrective—one that prioritizes real-world purchase data as the foundation of measurement. In other words, not just whether someone saw an ad, but whether they bought something because of it.

This push arrives as live sports, connected TV (CTV), and other fast-evolving media channels complicate traditional measurement frameworks. By uniting executives across martech and media, Affinity hopes to drive industry-wide standards for outcome-based measurement—potentially influencing billions in how budgets are allocated.

Who’s at the Table

The Council’s founding members include:

• Damian Garbaccio, Chief Commercial & Marketing Officer, Affinity Solutions

• Doug Campbell, Chief Strategy Officer, DoubleVerify

• Chase Miller, Chief Product Officer, Claritas

• Nishat Mehta, CEO, Lexitas; former President, Circana

• Kelley O’Hara, former professional soccer player, BreakAway Data ambassador, and host of Sports Are Fun!

It’s a blend of martech veterans and unexpected voices like O’Hara, whose inclusion signals the Council’s interest in cross-pollinating perspectives—particularly around high-growth areas like sports.

What the Council Will Do

The group’s mandate includes:

• Improving outcomes measurement by cementing purchase data as the gold standard.

• Establishing best practices through research and active participation in industry conversations.

• Expanding Affinity’s offerings, leveraging its deterministic, privacy-compliant consumer purchase data to unlock greater value for advertisers.

“The Outcomes Marketing Council represents a commitment to advancing innovation through tangible action to align the industry around metrics that truly matter,” said Garbaccio. “We can move the industry beyond proxies to verified, purchase-based outcomes, and create a better path for measuring and optimizing advertising effectiveness.”

DoubleVerify’s Doug Campbell echoed the sentiment, noting: “This Council offers an important opportunity to advance outcome-based measurement across the industry. By working with Affinity and other leaders, we can help ensure marketers have the transparency and tools they need to connect their investments to meaningful business impact.”

Industry Context

Outcome-based measurement is hardly a new idea, but the urgency has intensified. Marketers are under pressure to justify spend amid economic uncertainty, while channels like CTV and digital sports sponsorships lack standardized measurement. Competitors such as Nielsen, Kantar, and Comscore are making their own moves, but Affinity’s bet on purchase-based, privacy-compliant data could give it an edge.

If successful, the Outcomes Marketing Council may nudge the industry away from vanity metrics toward a more business-grounded model of accountability—something CMOs have long demanded but struggled to achieve.

The question now is whether the rest of the ecosystem will follow—or whether measurement will remain the industry’s unsolved riddle.

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