The Channels Marketers Forgot Are Solving Measurement
For a decade, marketers built growth strategies around deterministic measurement: knowing exactly who did what and when. That world has changed dramatically. The shift to privacy-first frameworks has fundamentally disrupted what's measurable and how.
New measurement approaches are emerging to address this reality. But here's what I'm seeing: The brands moving fastest aren't just adopting new attribution methods. They're rethinking how they prioritize channels and where best to focus.
Traditionally, marketers have overweighted paid media—where costs keep rising while ROI gets harder to justify—and started building around channels they directly control like their websites, email lists, and physical stores. While these have not historically been seen as the primary growth engines, marketers today want to focus on channels where they can understand what's working and optimize costs effectively.
Owned and earned channels are now becoming the most reliable path to growth because they offer more complete visibility into what drives results.
Owned Channels Make All Measurement Better
On owned channels, you control all aspects of the experience. This means you can measure the customer journey directly, without relying on third-party information.
When someone clicks from your website into your app, scans a QR code in your store, or opens your email and converts, you have full visibility into their journey.
But investing in owned and earned channels doesn't just give you clarity into those channels. It improves your measurement everywhere.
When you increase what you can measure with confidence, you build a more complete picture of how customers move through your entire ecosystem. Reducing any previously unattributed sources gives you more confidence in the traffic attributed to paid sources. Your first-party data from owned and earned channels can become the foundation for everything downstream. You’ll have better customer segmentation, more accurate lifetime value (LTV) forecasts, and smarter CRM strategies. When you know how different touchpoints work together, the true value of your paid channels is obvious.
Bringing Performance Marketing Discipline to Owned and Earned Channels
The best strategies treat owned channels with the same rigor, testing discipline, and optimization focus that paid media has often received.
One example of this done well is PUMA. The brand had lots of visitors to its mobile website but wasn’t actively converting those visitors into app users. When the team applied performance marketing thinking to test messaging and creative elements while tracking conversion rates, they added 8,000 new app users in under a month. This initiative to drive web users to the app became the third-largest non-paid revenue channel in North America.
Similarly, Max Fashion recognized that its 650 brick-and-mortar stores across 19 countries were being underutilized as a channel to connect with customers online. The company gamified app adoption, equipping 15,000-plus employees with unique QR codes that enabled granular measurement of stores and which placements drove the highest app conversion. Those QR codes delivered 15 percent of total app installs for Max Fashion, while reducing acquisition costs by 10 percent. Year over year, installs jumped 92 percent and orders increased 85 percent.
In a third example, Ancestry used email as a growth lever for its app. While email is most often used for retention and life cycle messaging, Ancestry segmented its audience, personalized calls-to-action, and measured conversion at every step. App opens increased 44 percent week over week. Downloads rose 50 percent domestically and nearly doubled internationally.
These companies succeeded by measuring and optimizing owned channels with the same discipline typically reserved for paid acquisition.
The Opportunity in What’s Been Overlooked
It’s not enough anymore for owned and earned channels to get slim resources and a fraction of the strategic focus. There is an opportunity to resource owned and earned as well as measure those channels with the same rigor expected on paid.
Traditionally underutilized assets can become strategic differentiators. PUMA did this with its mobile web traffic, Max Fashion with QR codes in store, and Ancestry with its email list.
The companies moving fastest aren't waiting for more beneficial privacy changes, they're building growth strategies around channels where measurement already works, where they control the customer experience, and where they can operate with confidence.
David Karnstedt is CEO at Branch. Karnstedt is a seasoned operating executive, board member, and adviser for technology companies. For more than 25 years, he has provided executive leadership with consistent focus and execution throughout the marketing technology ecosystem, with experience at Adobe, Efficient Frontier, Yahoo!, and Overture. He has served on the Boards of Demandbase, Vantiv, Quantifind, and JumpTap, along with Senior Advisory appointments at Redpoint Ventures and TPG Capital.