The Real Talk About Marketing Measurement

What happens when two people who've been in the trenches stop pretending and talk about what's really broken

Before you read: I ran our conversation through NotebookLM to create a 6-minute explainer. Does a decent job with the key points, though it misses some nuance. Listen to this first if you don’t want to commit to the full 40-minute YouTube video (linked below).

Nine years in measurement inside BigTech taught me the technical side. The last 12 months I’ve been fully on the other side. Working directly with business owners. Running tests. Building frameworks that actually work when you’re spending your own money and need answers in weeks, not quarters.

I’ve also been watching. Thinking. Observing the patterns that keep this industry stuck. Because if I’m going to contribute to real change, I need to understand what’s blocking it.

So when I invited Gabriele Franco (CEO of Cassandra) to sit down and talk, I wanted to compare notes. Two people who’ve been in the trenches, seeing the same patterns, trying to solve the same problems from different angles.

What came out of that conversation confirmed what I’ve been seeing: we know what works. The tools exist. The methods are proven. But most businesses are still stuck measuring the wrong things in the wrong ways.

Not because they’re behind. Because the path forward isn’t clear.

The Pattern We Both Keep Seeing

Gabriele shared a story I’ve heard variations of a dozen times:

Client spends $1M a month. Shopify shows actual revenue. Then they add up what Meta reports, what Google reports, what TikTok reports. Total comes out 40% higher than reality.

The math doesn’t work. It can’t work. But everyone just... accepts it.

Your platforms report what they can see. The problem is what they see is incomplete and optimized to make them look good. Nobody’s lying. The system just wasn’t designed to show you truth.

Most businesses pick the dashboard that feels most accurate, or average the numbers, or build some hybrid model. They keep moving. Keep spending. Keep trusting metrics that don’t reflect what’s actually happening.

The waste is real. Usually 20-40% of total spend. You just can’t see which 20-40%.

Where Most Businesses Actually Are

I built a framework I call the Measurement Consciousness Atlas. Not just because I love frameworks. Because after working with many businesses and marketing teams, I kept seeing the same patterns. The same stuck points. The same transformation triggers.

Stage 1 is where everyone starts. You trust platform metrics. You optimize for ROAS or CAC. You make decisions based on attribution. It feels scientific because the dashboards are precise.

The waste happens here. You just don’t see it yet.

Stage 2 is where change begins. Something breaks the illusion. Usually the numbers stop adding up. Finance flags it. Or you pause a channel and sales barely move. Or you add everything up and realize it’s mathematically impossible.

You know something’s wrong. You don’t know what’s right.

This is the most important transition point. Most businesses get stuck here because the next step requires questioning everything they’ve been doing.

What typically blocks the move from Stage 2 to 3:

• Identity protection - The CMO who built their career on these metrics can’t admit they might be wrong

• Political inertia - Changing measurement means admitting past decisions were based on wrong data

• Fear of simplicity - “If the answer was this simple, why didn’t we do it before?”

Stage 3 is where transformation happens. You stop treating attribution as truth. You test everything. You measure what actually moves the needle. You know your baseline.

Companies that make it here typically find the waste within 30 days. Not because they suddenly got smarter. Because they finally asked the right questions.

Stage 4 is where you build your own infrastructure. The economics shift. You outgrow what standard platforms can offer. You build your own systems because you understand the mechanics well enough to do it better.

The gap between these stages isn’t technical capability. It’s organizational willingness to question what everyone’s been treating as fact.

Two Approaches to the Same Problem

Gabriele and I are working on this from different angles.

He’s building Cassandra - making MMM accessible, faster, less dependent on six-month consulting cycles.

I’m focused on upleveling decision makers. Business owners who need practical frameworks to get to truth fast enough to act on it. Not perfect academic truth. Directional truth that improves your P&L this quarter.

We agreed: the companies that win aren’t the ones with perfect data. They’re the ones who move faster from confusion to clarity. Who waste less this month than last month. Who can prove what works and scale it before their competitors figure it out.

In the next few weeks I’ll share:

• How to diagnose where you actually are

• What blocks the transition between stages

• Practical guides to create breakthrough moments

If you’re spending $30K+/month on ads and suspect you’re wasting 20-40% but can’t prove it, join the waitlist → See If you qualify

Taking small batch of founding members for pilot. Need actual decision authority and willingness to act fast.

What We Didn’t Say On Camera

This industry has built a lot of infrastructure around keeping measurement complicated.

Not maliciously. It’s just the natural result of incentive structures. Complex feels valuable.

Here’s what I’ve learned over years of doing this work with real businesses:

The people who move fast are the ones with skin in the game. They’re spending their own money or directly responsible for bottom line P&L. They feel every wasted dollar. And when they see truth, they act immediately.

No committees. No approval chains. Just: show me what’s broken, let’s fix it, let’s move on.

That’s who this is for.

You don’t need perfect. You need better than yesterday. And you need it fast enough to matter.

Talgat

P.S. It’s been a while since my first post. A lot happened - I’ll share the progress and lessons soon. Posting more frequently from now on. Quality over quantity. Thanks for staying around. More to come.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube