An Interview: Dane Buchanan, our Chief Data & Analytics Officer, on Business of Apps discusses the need for holistic measurement
In the current economic climate, the futility of chasing clicks has never been more apparent. For many marketing leaders, digital dashboards are glowing with “vanity metrics,” millions of impressions and thousands of interactions, yet they face a gruelling uphill battle when trying to prove to the CFO that these figures move the needle on the balance sheet. This tension is the “easy data” trap, a reliance on metrics that capture activity but fail to quantify real-world business growth.
After 20 years of working with clients, we’ve been tackling this challenge head-on for quite some time now. Our Chief Data & Analytics Officer, Dane Buchanan, recently shared his perspective in an App Talk interview with David Murphy on Business of Apps. As the leader driving our data and measurement strategy, Dane’s core argument was on the urgent need for modern measurement to evolve from fragmented, activity-focused reporting toward a unified “strategy engine.”
Clicks and Impressions Are Not Growth
The most significant hurdle in modern marketing is the seductive nature of digital attribution. While it is immediate, granular, and easy to access, it’s fundamentally limited. As Dane mentions, “The issue with measuring just clicks and impressions is that it does not truly show growth.”
Relying on these metrics assumes a correlation that often collapses under scrutiny. To get a clearer picture of what’s driving a business, marketers need to look past surface-level figures. They must transition from tracking digital echoes to measuring whether their media spend is delivering a real-world impact that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise.
The Power of Incrementality (The “What If” Factor)
At the heart of a mature measurement strategy is media incrementality. Dane defines this as: “What happened because of the media”.
Brands shouldn’t waste budget on users who were already intent on buying. Instead, effective media acts as the catalyst for those who need that extra push. Consider seasonal peaks like Black Friday, where organic demands are up naturally. A mature approach baselines this organic lift and uses media to drive actual incremental demand on top.
As Dane puts it: “Most marketers would say that they don’t want to drive people who are going to buy anyway. They want to drive people who weren’t going to buy.”
Breaking the Silo Stalemate
Fragmented tools and internal silos kill confidence. Many brands run attribution, Media Mix Modelling (MMM), and incrementality testing in isolation, often owned by different teams using conflicting “sources of truth.”
At M+C Saatchi Performance, our “Single View” philosophy eliminates this friction. By unifying these disparate methods into one cohesive platform, M+C Saatchi OneView, we help brands and marketers move from debating data discrepancies to making unified, growth-focused decisions.
Check out more about M+C Saatchi OneView here: https://www.mcsaatchiperformance.com/oneview/
Privacy is Not Really A Hurdle, It’s In Fact, A “Golden Thread.”
The shifting landscape of data privacy, defined by Apple’s ATT, GDPR, and Google’s policy shifts, is frequently framed as a hurdle. However, Dane shares how we view it as a “Privacy by Design” opportunity to preserve capital at M+C Saatchi Performance.
Relying on user-level data is a massive business risk, and tech platforms can restrict access overnight, effectively “resetting” your knowledge base. By utilizing aggregated data, brands create a “golden thread” of consistent benchmarking. This allows a brand to compare ROI today against performance five years from now, regardless of platform whims. This preserves the marketer’s credibility with finance leaders.
AI As A Strategy Engine
To process this complexity at large, we utilize AI within our M+C Saatchi OneView platform with a critical distinction. We separate AI for operational speed, building and tweaking models faster than was possible even six months ago, from Generative AI used for strategic insight.
It is not a “black box” solution. The platform utilizes human-in-the-loop oversight to ensure that the automated model-tweaking remains grounded in reality. The integration of Generative AI then translates these complex data sets into human-like insights, telling the user exactly what action to take next. It transforms measurement from a retrospective reporting exercise into a proactive strategy engine.
The 3x ROI Case Study
The results speak for themselves. Dane shares that, in a recent example with a brand selling both online and offline, they relied on digital attribution that only credited media for online conversions, leading to chronic underinvestment.
By applying M+C Saatchi OneView’s unified approach, we uncovered the “hidden” lift digital media drove in their offline sales. The ROI was 3x higher than previously noted. This shifted the brand from defensive caution to confident scaling, with data now forecasting outcomes before budgets are even deployed.
The Future of Media Confidence
Measurement is rapidly evolving from a retrospective audit into a tool for proactive commercial confidence. The objective is to gain the clarity required to grow a business with conviction. As the industry moves toward these robust, aggregated models, every marketing leader must ask if their current data is helping them make decisions, or is it just giving them more work to interpret?
To gain a deeper understanding of how these strategies are being used today, you can watch the full interview on the Business of Apps YouTube Video on their channel.
If you are ready to move beyond fragmented reporting and unify your own measurement strategy, explore the capabilities of the M+C Saatchi Performance OneView.
