From Visibility to Value: Outcomes As The New Mandate for Marketers
Marketing is having its reckoning. For toolong, our industry has been split between brand storytelling and performancedashboards, between influence and instrumentation. But nothing is binary.Businesses no longer ask what marketing did; they ask what it delivered. Thequestion is not new. What is new is the urgency to answer it.
This is not a theoretical shift. It is acommercial correction. Boards and CFOs are demanding more than metrics, theywant outcomes. At Platformance, we’ve built our company around this principle:marketing should be held to the same standards as every other businessfunction. Spend, result, proof. If it doesn’t move the commercial needle, itdoesn’t matter.
The End of Guesswork
The marketing function has passed through twomajor eras. The first, rooted in the age of influence, prized creativity, fame,and intuition. Its heroes were ad agencies, and its metrics were awareness,reach, and ad recall. It was high on emotion but low on accountability. Thencame the second era ; the age of instrumentation, where digital promised dataand platforms delivered dashboards. Clicks, impressions, installs, and viewswere the new currency. But while we gained measurement, we lost meaning.
A cost per click is not a customer. A lead isnot a conversion. An app install is not a transaction. In our rush to quantify,we began to mistake activity for impact. Marketing became complex, but notnecessarily credible.
The third era, now fully underway, is the age of outcomes. It isn’t about doingmore. It’s about proving more. Growth focused marketers aren’t fighting overattribution anymore; they’re aligning with sales and finance to build a sharedmodel of value. It’s a mindset shift: from fragmented metrics to commercialfluency.
Why Advertising Is the Flashpoint
If you want to understand why this shift isso visible in advertising, it’s because advertising is the most public and mostexpensive, expression of marketing. Boards don’t see the pricing strategy orCRM workflow. They see the ad. And if the ad can’t demonstrate a return,marketing loses the room.
Advertising has become the pressure pointwhere trust is earned, or eroded. That’s why the outcomes era begins here.Because when advertising fails to convert, it’s not just a media issue. It’s acredibility issue.
At Platformance, we believe marketing shouldbe tied to verified commercial outcomes. That’s why we’ve built the region’sfirst pay per outcome engine at scale. Every Dollar, Dirham, or Riyal spentmust lead to tracked, validated business results. Not in a dashboard, but inthe bottom line.
Outcome Marketing is Not a Buzzword, It’s a Mandate
Some critics say “outcomes” is just a rebrandof ROI. But they miss the point. ROI is often misused to measure short termefficiency at the channel level. Outcomes take a broader, more strategic view.They span the full funnel: brand lift, acquisition, retention, and margincontribution. They ask: did this effort create value? And can we prove it?
Importantly, this isn’t just a model forecommerce or DTC brands. We've seen outcomes based models applied successfullyacross banking, telco, enterprise B2B, and even public sector campaigns. Theframeworks differ, but the standard is the same: spend, deliver, verify.
One of the best recent examples comes fromFirst Abu Dhabi Bank, which transitioned its marketing function from activitybased metrics to business outcomes. Their results? A 20x increase in digitalacquisition share, and over one hundred thousand of verified, revenuegenerating conversions. Not only did marketing gain credibility, it became adriver of strategic growth.
Why Now?
This correction is happening because theenvironment demands it. Budgets are under pressure. AI is adding complexity.Privacy regulation is tightening. But more than anything, businesses are out ofpatience. They expect marketing to justify its cost like every other function.And frankly, they should.
Outcomes marketing is not easy. It requiresinternal measurement capabilities, cross functional alignment, and executivesponsorship. It means moving from platform reports to internal truth, fromattribution systems to enterprise performance data. It also requires marketersto develop commercial fluency: the ability to speak the language of finance,not just funnels.
From Metrics to Meaning
At Platformance, we are proud to be part ofIAB MENA, a community helping drive these conversations forward. As one of theregion’s newest members, we’re committed to leading the shift towardmeasurable, accountable marketing. We’ve built our platform, our team, and ourculture around one simple belief: outcomesare the only metric that matter.
This isn’t about replacing creativity withspreadsheets. It’s about making creativity accountable. It’s not abouteliminating brand work, it’s about proving its impact. The freedom to test andinnovate must come with the discipline to measure and verify.
The Path Ahead
Marketing’s next decade will belong to thosewho can align their craft with commercial outcomes. That’s why we believe theera of outcomes isn’t coming. It’s already here. And the marketers who thrivein it will be those who can say, clearly, confidently, and consistently, whatthey spent, what they delivered, and what it contributed to the business.
Not in theory. Not in dashboards. But ingrowth.