REZONENCE Blog Stop f***ing with the magic

It's been a month since Google's announcement that it was killing off the 3rd party cookie - and it's an indication of just what a mammoth announcement it was that it's still top of the list of industry talking points.And it's 'performance marketing' that's in the firing line. As Seb Joseph writes, "The predicament is prompting some advertisers to dust off old measurement techniques..." even if "certain advertising executives shudder at the thought of reverting to this antiquated measurement method". But why shudder? In an excellent Campaign article (that is behind a paywall) Charles Vallance discusses the term 'performance marketing' - and its undermining of the credibility of broad, brand-building media. After all, all media channels should deliver. It also goes some way to explaining why some marketers shudder at the thought of loosing their tracking capabilities. As the industry weens itself off 3rd party cookies, it's going to have to change its preconceptions on what constitutes performance, and importantly use formats that provide 'performance' in the true sense of the word. The argument against the so-called 'performance marketing' as stated by Vallance, is that "It doesn't make the sale but, by being the last link in the purchase chain... gets the credit for a sale that would have happened anyway...", a view shared by Steve Tadelis in his fascinating interview with The Correspondent: "What do these impressive numbers mean if the people who see your ad are the exact same people who were going to use eBay anyway?"True advertising performance is more than attribution, and the 'antiquated measurement methods' are not antiquated at all, they are often measures of what really matters. And whilst most digital formats have only been created to deliver on digital's narrow definition of performance, our format was created to provide you with real advertising performance - attention, brand recall and long-lasting results. As Jesse Frederik and Maurits Martijn put it, let's stop 'f***ing with the magic'.