Milena Traikovich is a powerhouse in the demand generation space, known for turning complex analytics into high-quality lead machines. Her approach moves beyond simple clicks, focusing on how brand building and performance marketing can coexist through rigorous optimization and trusted measurement. In our conversation today, we dive into the psychology of marketing budgets and why the industry’s obsession with immediate performance data might be blinding us to the long-term power of brand identity. We explore the limitations of social media returns, the inherent flaws in traditional ad recall metrics, and the necessity of independent, third-party verification to prove that brand marketing isn’t just a “gut feeling” but a measurable driver of sustainable growth.
Performance marketing budgets often climb while brand spend remains stagnant because brand results are perceived as harder to quantify; how do we break this cycle of viewing brand value as purely intuitive?
It is a conversation I have had dozens of times across this region, and the answer is almost always the same: people think brand is just too difficult to measure. This leads to a dangerous line of reasoning where anything that is hard to measure is viewed as hard to value, leaving brand budgets stuck in the mud while performance dollars soar. I am calling time on this thinking once and for all because I have spent years measuring the nuts and bolts of hundreds of campaigns, and I can say with certainty that brand channels are not inherently harder to track. They have simply been measured less consistently, often because the right approach was not as easily readable as the shiny dashboards marketers are used to. We need to bring brand building back into the conversation with the same credibility as performance, backed by trusted measurement that reflects the hard work these campaigns are actually doing.
Marketers frequently rely on platform-specific dashboards to justify their spending, but you have suggested these sources can be unconvincing; what are the risks of relying on data from companies that have a vested interest in showing success?
The primary risk is that you are only seeing a curated version of the truth, often measured in silos that fail to offer a full picture of campaign effectiveness. Many of these platforms have absolutely no incentive to show anything but glowing results, which creates a disconnect between what the measurement claims and what is actually happening on the ground. We see a stubborn discrepancy between what measurement can do today and what most marketers assume it can do, largely because they are stuck using unconvincing data borrowed from the platforms themselves. If you are only looking at one channel’s self-reported success, you are missing the murkiness of how those results actually interact across your entire strategy. To move forward, we have to stop assuming that a platform’s internal numbers are the final word on success and instead look toward independent verification.
Many campaigns still use ad recall as a primary metric for success, yet you argue this is fundamentally flawed; what should we be tracking instead to ensure we are measuring actual exposure?
Using ad recall as a proxy for exposure is a trap because it measures familiarity rather than actual impact. If you ask someone if they remember seeing an ad, there is a very high risk they will simply name a brand they already know, regardless of whether they actually interacted with your specific campaign. As a general rule of thumb, you should only trust measurement that confirms someone was actually exposed to an impression through passive technology like pixel matching and impression-level tracking. Today, independent third-party providers can verify digital ad exposure with incredible precision, ensuring your Brand Lift results are based on real data rather than assumptions. Without that confirmed exposure, your Brand Lift numbers are essentially meaningless and tell you nothing about whether your media spend actually worked.
At recent industry events like ATS Singapore, the gap between measurement capability and marketer assumptions was a major spotlight; how can businesses transition from siloed tools to a unified measurement framework?
The shift begins when we stop treating different channels as if they exist in completely separate universes. Too much of our industry runs one methodology for social media, a different tool for TV, and absolutely nothing for out-of-home (OOH) advertising. It is no wonder that marketers flounder when they are asked to compare results across all three because there is no baseline to optimize toward. My fellow panelist at ATS Singapore, Raveena Udasi Mathew, hit the nail on the head when she argued that performance marketing itself is no longer the differentiator. Instead, the real competitive edge now lies in the ability to deliver a true omnichannel view that treats brand building as a standard running across every single channel.
What is your forecast for brand marketing measurement as we head toward 2026?
I believe that by 2026, the “holy grail” for every marketer will be making every single dollar work harder through consistent, independent measurement across the entire funnel. We are moving away from justifying brand spend through intuition or category convention and moving toward a future where brand building is treated with the same rigor as performance marketing. This shift won’t necessarily change the way media works, but it will fundamentally change how confidently we can talk about why it works. As social media channels start reaching the same audiences with diminishing returns, those who can defend their brand spend with trusted data will build much stronger investment plans. Ultimately, the marketers who leave siloed measurement in the past will be the ones who dominate the landscape in the years to come.
