text: And what’s killing it? Marketers, agencies, and publishers who can’t prove that their marketing investments work.
  CMOs always tell me that their biggest challenge is proving the ROI of their Marketing investments. So I was really intrigued by this video interview from a CEO compelling marketers to take a performance-based marketing approach.
  There is a reason the interview is described as a video of a CEO who “freaks out a room full of Media execs” at the Re:Code/Media conference earlier this year.
  If you watch the whole thing, you can tell from the questions and the audience reaction, that this was not what advertisers, agencies, and media companies wanted to hear. But don’t worry, you don’t have to watch it (although you should.) I’m gonna break down the key points here.
  Never heard of Machine Zone or their CEO, Gabe Leydon? He’s the one responsible for all those Mobile Strike ads featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Game of War ads with Kate Upton. And he is one of the largest media buyers in the world.
  You might be wondering, if he doesn’t believe in ads, then why is his company spending millions of dollars every year on TV commercials?
  Just like many other brands, Machine Zone wants to grow its business internationally. Leydon says their goal is to build a game that the whole world can play at the same time, and to do so it would need to market to the entire world so everyone is aware of their game and can play at the same time.
  This sounds like the traditional “reach and frequency” argument you’ve heard from many ad execs for years. But he argues that he employs the world’s best engineers to create an amazing product experience. To him, the media is just an extension of his focus on creating desirable brand experiences.
  And that is why he doesn’t recommend television to any brands unless they have an amazing product and who have already maximized their spending and measured the results first on digital.
  To Leydon, television is overpriced and no one is really watching the commercials anyway. The problem for many buyers though, is that they don’t know this because they are not tracking it.
  According to Leydon, “CEOs and boards will no longer accept marketing that isn’t driving real business results.”
  Leydon says Machine Zone advertises so much on television because of the social power it has. Television creates a halo effect. “You’re not a brand until you go on television,” he adds.
  But marketing to the whole world is extremely expensive. And if they’re going to spend all that money, Leydon says they need to learn to measure the effectiveness of their spend to actual business results.
  If you’re tracking the effect ads have on your digital marketing efforts, meaning you’re measuring the click-through rates, then you’ll see that your advertising prices do go down when you buy on television.
  If brands are tracking the way they buy and the ROI of their investment, they would see that they make their advertising medium much more expensive by just going to one channel. Leydon says that companies need to work with “absolutely everybody” out there to get the best price.
  Brands must diversify their channel strategy because people aren’t just watching television or using Facebook or Twitter. People are using multiple sites, channels and apps every day. When you do so, Leydon says you can price your media much more effectively because you can make everyone compete with each other. Machine Zone reportedly uses over 300 channels for their advertising campaigns.
  The problem Leydon sees is that currently there is no ad tech or software platform to make everyone truly compete in an open market. And he blames networks and agencies for this because they all create their own lock-ins that makes it very difficult for buyers to measure and quantify the value of their advertising spend.
  Leydon commented that agencies exist “to steal my money.” And publishers intentionally mask their data to keep media buyers in the dark. Ouch!
  Networks and media companies talk about how many eyeballs they have, but that is as much (or little) data as you’ll get from them. But to Leydon, that just doesn’t work anymore.
  There is a lot of fraud out there, and buyers will increasingly want to know if these eyeballs are real or not and how they are performing. They will want to know the effects of their ad buying, and if they can buy more to scale.