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Axios Media Trends

The measurement landscape is more crowded and fragmented than ever, leaving advertisers overwhelmed with trying to hold publishers to account.

Why it matters: The measurement industry underpins how the $1 trillion global ad industry is planned, priced and justified. Without clarity, marketers risk wasting money and annoying consumers.

Catch up quick: In the analog era, marketers could rely mostly on one vendor — Nielsen — for television and radio metrics.

The reach of print publications was audited annually by the Alliance for Audited Media, a trusted not-for-profit media auditing organization formed in 1914.

By the numbers: Today, marketers juggle dozens of vendors across TV, digital, social and retail advertising.

Based on Axios research, there are at least 142 measurement vendors. 

Broken out by categories, there are at least 74 audience vendors, 15 verification, 27 identifying context like market research and social listening, 12 attention, 48 outcomes and 28 attribution (providing marketing mix modeling and multi-touch attribution). 

The big picture: The explosion of measurement vendors has spurred chaos and frustration among marketers.

"The Net Promoter Score for attribution vendors in the United States today is approximately -15 on average. This is remarkably bad and reflects marketers' tremendous frustration with current approaches," says Lou Paskalis, an adviser and longtime ad industry executive.

Identity is siloed, audiences are duplicated and attribution timelines don't match. Brands and agencies are seeking "speed and fidelity," Paskalis says.

"When you have channel-based measurement [and] you have siloes within an organization, everybody comes back justifying their own version of the truth," Crossmedia CEO Kamran Asghar says. "It's a very simple problem, but very hard to pull off."

Between the lines: Most measurement executives admit that the current landscape is unwieldy.

"Marketers don't need 48 measurement providers emailing and begging to give them 30 minutes. They need four real, trusted partners," EDO CEO Kevin Krim says.

Startups like EDO emerged in the 2010s as streaming and social splintered viewing habits and introduced new data silos, and low interest rates opened fundraising opportunities.

Now, providers are mastering one slice of the map while partnering and integrating with others.

Zoom in: Marketers are focused on outcomes, seeking to tie spend more directly to business results through performance-based metrics like sales lift, foot traffic and incremental reach.

"We've been measuring for a long time clicks, impressions, brand awareness, but you're going to pair that and say, 'Well, did you move product? Did you make something happen for the brand?'" says Edwin Wong, Uber Advertising's head of measurement science.

Newer ad platforms like Uber are positioning themselves as real-world performance engines that connect attention to action.

Yes, but: Advertisers are also wary of over-relying on performance marketing over brand lift. Nike, for example, saw a significant drop in its market value after pivoting to a data-driven marketing strategy.

Adelaide CEO Marc Guldimann says that mindset puts marketers at risk of becoming fulfillment arms.

"Trading on outcomes creates poor incentives and outsources a core responsibility of marketers, turning resources into product demand," Guldimann says.

Zoom out: From legacy currency models to black-box verification tech, frustration with the status quo runs deep.

"Standardization is key," says Nada Bradbury, a former Nielsen executive who's now CEO of Ad-ID, a nonprofit organization seeking to provide a universal identifier for ad creatives.

Former Interactive Advertising Bureau CEO Randall Rothenberg and consultant John Frelinghuysen have teamed up on a white paper proposing a measurement overhaul modeled after the music industry's evolution to a more integrated approach for digital composition, production and distribution.

"That old system may have kept transactions flowing, but it was broken, and it can't be fixed," Rothenberg says. "You can't put Band-Aids on that system to get from there to where the technology and data now allow you to go."

What's next: AI unlocks new potential for smarter modeling and optimization. 

Jonah Goodhart, an entrepreneur and angel investor who sold digital measurement firm Moat to Oracle, is building an AI-first measurement startup called Mobian that's initially focused on brand safety. 

Henry Innis says he founded Mutinex to "democratize" marketing mix modeling, expanding access to marketing analytics like fellow Australian company Canva did with design tools. The platform uses AI to provide real-time answers instead of delayed reports.

"With AI, there's going to be more fragmentation. There's going to be startups who are going to be able to build better mousetraps faster," Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise says.

A graphic showing the landscape of media measurement vendors, by category. As of August 2025, there are about 140 vendors operating in 6 major categories: audience, verification, context, outcomes, attribution and attention.

2025-08-02-measurement-map

Data: Axios research; Chart: Kavya Beheraj/Axios

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The measurement landscape is more crowded and fragmented than ever, leaving <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="advertisers" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/06/newfronts-digital-advertising" data-vars-content-id="a4f15e90-6b39-4a92-8cbd-30f519695de0" data-vars-headline="Advertisers and marketers navigate crowded, fragmented measurement industry" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/06/newfronts-digital-advertising" target="_self">advertisers</a> overwhelmed with trying to hold publishers to account.Why it matters: The measurement industry underpins how the $1 trillion global ad industry is planned, priced and justified. Without clarity, marketers risk wasting money and annoying consumers.

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