I’ve spent my entire career working in programmatic media and CTV, and let me tell you: click-based attribution has always been a shaky foundation to build serious marketing decisions on.
Easy to report? Sure. Accurate? Not remotely.
That’s why Microsoft’s recent announcement introducing impressions-based remarketing caught my attention. Not because I think Microsoft will flip the industry on its head (they just don’t have the scale) but because it signals a broader, long-overdue shift in how we evaluate media that will pay dividends in the long term.
Clicks were never enough
In programmatic and CTV, we’ve never had the luxury of clicks as a clean proxy for performance. A 30-second CTV spot doesn’t come with a “click here to buy now” button. A banner ad campaign usually draws few clicks but many thousands of harder-to-value impressions.
To argue convincingly for our channels, we’ve had to build more sophisticated muscles: incrementality testing, media mix modeling, and lift studies.
That’s the only way to answer the real questions marketers should be asking:
- Did this channel actually move the needle?
- Would the conversion have happened without the exposure?
- How much credit should upper-funnel impressions get for downstream results?
Click-based reporting makes those questions a nice-to-have that usually gets deprioritized. Impressions-based frameworks make them unavoidable.
What happens when impressions become the currency
When you take away the crutch of last-click attribution, the spotlight shifts. Suddenly, retargeting, brand search, and other bottom-funnel tactics don’t look nearly as magical. MMM and lift tests measure those channels in the full marketing picture, which tends to diminish the perceived value they carry in last-click measurement systems.
Meanwhile, channels like CTV, programmatic display, and upper-funnel social start to get their due. There are environments (on the big screen or in-feed) where ads are far more likely to be seen, and their impact echoes downstream in ways a click will never capture.
Why CTV stands to gain the most
I’m biased, but for good reason: CTV has always been an impressions-first channel. Every ad is full-screen, non-skippable, and fully delivered. Completion rates aren’t just high; they’re essentially 100%. In an impressions-driven world, that kind of inventory stands out as both efficient and high-value.
When you layer in modern targeting, data-driven audience building, and incrementality testing, CTV transcends its reputation as an awareness channel and starts to look like one of the most accountable pieces of the mix.
Making the shift
Most experienced marketers know that there is no perfect measurement model. You won’t wake up tomorrow, swap clicks for impressions, and suddenly have a single source of truth. But if you test incrementality, run MMM, and mix in multi-touch attribution where it makes sense, you’ll get closer to reality than any click report ever gave you.
The first step is simply to start. Communicate with your leadership team about why reporting will look different, prepare them for a more nuanced story, and emphasize that “imperfect but closer to truth” beats “digestible but misguided” every time.
It’s not an easy shift, but keep in mind that the real risk isn’t in moving forward with impressions-based measurement. It’s staying stuck in a click-based model that everyone knows is flawed and giving your competitors a head start to get smarter about where their dollars actually work.
If you’re ready to put more thought into impressions than clicks, let’s chat.