Jamie Irving, VP Digital Marketing and CRM at Pentland Brands, speaks to New Digital Age Editor-in-Chief Justin Pearse about the evolving challenges of measurement, the role of econometrics, and why effectiveness must always trump efficiency.
What does measurement mean to you today across multiple brands and multiple channels?
Where we are right now is on a journey from efficiency into the world of effectiveness. That is a challenge every advertiser is grappling with.
For us, one of the big complications is that a lot of our business is not trackable on our own website. We operate a high wholesale model, so much of our revenue flows through other points of sale. That is fine, because we want to be present wherever our consumers choose to shop.
But the complexity lies in making sure our media works together. If someone is converting through wholesale, we need to win them at the upper and mid funnel, making sure we are top of mind when they are on the high street.
If they are on our website, then it is about mid to lower funnel tactics. The challenge is how to look at the funnel as a whole and measure effectiveness across all touchpoints, regardless of whether the conversion happens with us directly or through a retailer.
How do you move away from simple metrics like ROI on a single channel?
The hardest shift is letting go of single KPIs. It is easy to track ROI or ROAS on a website and feel comfortable with that, but the bigger question is how you measure profitability across all touchpoints over a longer time horizon.
We need to lean into econometric models that show the impact of multiple channels working together over years, not just days. Digital promised that cookies could solve everything with neat numbers, but multi-touch attribution turned out to be, frankly, nonsense. We are now returning to the grey areas of marketing where behavioural science and econometrics guide smarter planning.
For me, there are three pillars.
First, optimisation metrics across channels for efficiency. Second, incrementality testing, ideally using first-party data. And finally, econometrics for the long-term view, which helps us decide if, for example, we should shift spend from digital into out-of-home because it resonates more with our most valuable consumer groups
Some brands have famously switched off digital channels completely to discover what actually happens to the bottom line. Should all advertisers be brave enough to do the same?
It is really difficult to switch off a channel altogether.
Take affiliates, for instance. It is a love-hate relationship. They generate numbers, but you are never sure how incremental the results are. We often test incrementality by looking at how many of those customers are genuinely new to file, or whether they would have converted anyway.
That is where audience-level testing becomes so valuable. For example, you may find that Performance Max delivers little incremental value for existing customers, in which case you might turn it off for that group.
But for brand search, the risk of someone else stepping into the space is high, so you may keep it running despite a low incremental return. It is about balancing risk, cost and
With CMO tenures so short, how can brands focus on long-term measurement like econometrics?
I think effectiveness is becoming harder to avoid. Multi-touch attribution is no longer taken seriously, so the conversation naturally shifts to longer-term approaches.
Of course, direct-to-consumer businesses may still chase short-term growth, especially if their goal is to sell the company. But there is now greater transparency in consumer data, so it is easier to spot when a DTC brand has reached its ceiling. That forces businesses to focus on profitable growth, not just growth for growth’s sake.
For me, the key is to tie acquisition to a profit metric and to drive more profit from existing consumers. If you do that, it naturally shifts your relationship with channels and opens the door to econometrics.
Ultimately, it comes down to understanding consumers rather than cookies.
How are you dealing with cookie deprecation and signal loss?
We treat cookies as about 20% accurate. That means we do not rely on them for measurement, but we may still use them for low-risk targeting.
Instead, we prefer working with deterministic data sets in walled gardens. Clean rooms give us robust and large-scale data to work with, and the competitive advantage lies in how you bring your own consumer insight into those environments.
We avoid most programmatic display because I do not believe it delivers premium outcomes. However, I do like programmatic out-of-home and connected TV, where the supply is more controlled and measurable. For me, it always comes back to whether the medium can genuinely shift behaviour.
How do you see AI impacting measurement and effectiveness?
I love it. Our industry has been built on machine learning for years, but the recent leaps in accessibility are exciting.
From a planning standpoint, the data now available is huge. From a reporting perspective, it makes tools more affordable and accessible, which speeds up payback. And creatively, the potential is enormous.
magine being able to build consumer profiles that combine media and creative preferences, quiz them pre-campaign, and then plan accordingly. That takes segmentation into overdrive.
The consumer-focused applications of AI are the most exciting. If you combine access to data across platforms, robust measurement, and AI-driven creative, you can plan and execute in ways that genuinely change behaviour.
At this point, you have to embrace it if you want to keep moving forward.
