Data and measurement

Why custom measurement is your competitive advantage

As advertising environments grow more complex, measurement is no longer just about accountability — it’s about advantage. Media planners and buyers may be awash in data, yet many still rely on standardized metrics that weren’t designed to reflect how their businesses actually grow. This can result in a disconnect where campaigns may look efficient on the surface, but still fail to answer the most important question: Is advertising driving revenue?

March 19, 2026

Orange and yellow graphic of a hot air balloon carrying a shopping bag

Lee Singletary

Editorial Director, The Trade Desk

Increasingly, leading brands are addressing that gap by designing custom measurement solutions tailored to their specific business goals, acquired data assets, and individual market dynamics. Savvy brands are turning to platforms such as The Trade Desk that can support that level of flexibility and ingenuity at scale.

This is where working with us can become a strategic differentiator.

Rather than forcing brands into one-size-fits-all measurement frameworks, The Trade Desk’s Kokai platform can help enable advertisers to bring together the following insights:

First-party data
Third-party signals
Custom key performance indicators (KPIs)

Then they can activate those insights directly within Kokai’s media buying and optimization workflows. Measurement isn’t simply something that happens after the campaign wraps — it becomes part of how the campaign operates.

That shift is already reshaping how some of the world’s most sophisticated marketers approach growth.

Take the McDonald’s French marketing team, who rethought how streaming performance was measured across its business. The brand worked with us to develop a custom measurement approach that better reflects real business outcomes — not just impressions or reach.

By aligning data, measurement, and activation, McDonald’s France reported a 46% higher McScore, the brand’s internal KPI for ad effectiveness in streaming environments.¹ This increase proved the team could evaluate streaming’s impact using metrics tied to McDonald’s real business goals.

By integrating their own data and applying custom KPIs directly within Kokai, the team was able to make more confident, outcome‑driven decisions across channels.

Magnum Germany: Custom measurement that fuels demand

A similar philosophy guided The Magnum Ice Cream Company’s approach in Germany, albeit in a different category.

In a highly seasonal market, the Magnum brand needed to understand where advertising could create demand, not simply follow it. Working with agency PHD Germany and Omnicom Media’s data division, Annalect, the media buying team combined regional retail sales data with contextual signals, such as weather forecasts, to build a custom KPI that prioritized efficient investment.

Activated through our platform, that measurement framework dynamically guided media spend across hundreds of geo‑segments — and the impact was clear.

The strategy helped deliver a remarkable

%: incremental sales lift in prioritized geo‑segments²
(compared to a baseline period*)

These results demonstrate the power of tailoring measurement to the realities of seasonal CPG buying behavior.

Data and measurement

Learn the benefits of custom solutions

Get to know three ways you can use APIs to level up your brand.

Watch video

Different industries. Different challenges. The same underlying principle.

In both cases, the custom measurement worked because it was designed around how the business actually operates within the respective CPG and QSR industries. The media buying teams were able to load data into the Kokai platform and act on insights in real time for maximum campaign impact.

That ability to close the loop between data, measurement, and activation sets custom measurement apart, transforming it from a passive scorecard into a growth engine. This allows brands to:

Apply their own first-party or retail data
Layer in relevant contextual or behavioral signals
And define KPIs that reflect true business value

Sales-effect analysis

A recent analysis across 10 programmatic CPG campaigns reinforces the power of this approach for delivering outcomes. On average, brands achieved a 2.5% incremental sales lift, with most exceeding industry benchmarks and delivering 2 times incremental return on ad spend (ROAS).¹

%: incremental sales lift

x: incremental ROAS*

These results were observed across product categories and budget sizes, underscoring the value of measurement frameworks built to evaluate true incremental growth.

The future is flexible, strategic, and built for impact

For advertisers navigating crowded markets, shifting consumer behavior, and growing pressure to prove ROAS, the implication is clear: The future of measurement isn’t standardized — it’s strategic, and it requires partners built for flexibility, speed, and precision.

As more brands follow the path charted by McDonald’s and The Magnum Ice Cream Company, custom measurement is quickly moving from a nice‑to‑have to a competitive necessity. And for those ready to turn insight into impact, the right platform can make all the difference.

Ready to learn more about custom APIs or other measurement solutions?

Contact us below or reach out to your representative at The Trade Desk.

This information is provided solely for background and is not a representation or guarantee of any future performance.

_Sources:
_1._{“McDonald’s and Publicis innovate custom full-funnel video measurement solutions”}
_2._{“Magnum drives 30% incremental sales after blending weather and retail data”}
_{*To measure the success of the new strategy, the campaign was executed in two phases: A baseline period without optimization was followed by full activation of the new strategy and algorithm. Sales lift and overall results were calculated using the same index methodology — comparing changes in zip/postcode-level indices and overall performance against the starting baseline. This ensured that the impact of optimization was measured consistently and accurately.}
_{3. The Trade Desk and Circana, Inc., Sales Effect Study Results Summary, 2025. *ROAS is a simple unweighted average of 10 studies and does not account for any outliers incl. highest performer (ROAS 10x).}