Sachin Gadhvi

CMOs demand guaranteed delivery, lowest CPMs, strategic flexibility, and outcome-based pricing. Physics says you can't have all four simultaneously. Principal media delivers three of them. The question is which three matter most. Forrester's new principal media report from the inimitable Jay Pattisall is very much worth a read, and it's going to trigger the predictable debate. Critics will argue agencies are creating conflicts. Evangelists will tout cost savings. Both will miss the strategic reality: CMOs facing compression don't have the luxury of perfect markets. I've watched boards push CMOs for guaranteed outcomes while slashing budgets. In that environment, academic arguments about strategic flexibility mean nothing. The anti-principal media argument assumes unlimited client patience, perfect information, and rational markets. Reality looks different. Reality is: your board wants cost certainty so they can model P&L without media volatility. Reality is: your CFO wants guaranteed delivery so you're not scrambling for Super Bowl inventory in scatter markets. Reality is: your CEO wants outcome-based pricing that ties media spend to business results. Principal media trades strategic flexibility for the three things boards actually care about: cost certainty, delivery guarantee, and outcome alignment. The Forrester report shows 80% of marketers are interested in principal media advantages. That's not because CMOs are naive about conflicts of interest. It's because they're making rational trade-offs under real constraints. The criticism of principal media comes from people who've never faced the impossible triangle. They can afford to optimize for strategic flexibility because they're not accountable for the P&L impact when media costs spike or inventory disappears. Yes, principal media requires transparency. Yes, it needs contractual controls and performance accountability. Yes, clients should cap how much spend flows through principal arrangements. But the mechanism itself? It's agencies finally building inventory positions that enable the outcome-based pricing we've demanded for years. I'm a big supporter as, for two decades, I've watched CMOs demand that agencies move from billing hours to pricing on outcomes. "Put skin in the game," they said. "Share the risk." Now agencies are doing exactly that with principal media, and the industry is calling it a conflict of interest. We can't have it both ways. Forrester predicts principal media will grow to one-third of billings by 2026. Read their report, then decide which three variables matter most for your business. https://lnkd.in/eKHg5qmk #PrincipalMedia #MediaBuying #CMO #MarketingLeadership #MarketingStrategy

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In a world where the line between B2C and B2B is increasingly blurry, are your consumer insights actually driving meaningful innovation? Or are you drowning in data without actionable direction? What I'm seeing across industries: • Teams spending WEEKS on ideation that could be compressed into HOURS • Insights professionals struggling to translate trends into tangible product concepts • Innovation leaders fighting to get buy-in from skeptical executives • The gap between spotting a trend and implementing it is growing wider One innovation leader I spoke with recently confessed: "We're collecting more consumer data than ever, but somehow generating fewer breakthrough ideas." The most successful teams I've observed are doing three things differently: Using AI-augmented research to accelerate the discovery process Breaking out of industry echo chambers to find adjacent opportunities Implementing rapid prototyping frameworks that compress the innovation timeline Question for my network: What's your biggest challenge in translating consumer insights into actual innovation? Is it finding the right trends, getting organizational buy-in, or something else entirely? #ConsumerInsights #Innovation #TrendForecasting #ProductDevelopment #FutureOfBusiness

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Is the lower funnel now broken? Been thinking about this a bit lately. A lot of data’s pointing to a near future where brand and performance meet at the top of the funnel, and paths scatter far and wide from there. Another platform, a marketplace, search (when they remember your name). CTR was made for banners in 2002. CVR was made for funnels that are now liquid not linear. A couple of numbers bring that to life: GWI data shows only 15% of internet users have ever clicked a paid ad. And Peter Buckley recently shared Dan Wilson's finding that for every £5 of revenue creators drive, ONLY £1 shows up in click-based attribution. From that smidgeon of visible behaviour, we’re claiming the bulk of our mid-low funnel success. If the creative’s good (fit for platform, engaging, audience-first) it already earns better CPMs and easier auction wins. So maybe performance isn’t the problem. Maybe measurement is. I think we all agree last-click is done, MMMs are too slow for creative iteration and lift tests still report against the outdated KPIs. I like what Dan Wilson’s doing at Charlie Oscar - linking top and bottom funnel through Revenue per Reach: how much revenue any creator content drives per 1,000 people reached. Maybe there are other better mid-low funnel measures for our media and creative out there? iCPA / iROAS: incremental cost or return, not just spend vs sales UR (Uplift Rate): probability that exposure actually changed behaviour QCR (Qualified Click Rate): high-value clicks that led to meaningful sessions, not pit stops ATC (Add-to-Cart Rate): clear intent, not just interaction SLI (Search Lift Index): incremental brand or product-term search per 1k exposures I reckon we need better definitions of impact.

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Thank you Blue Chip and Brand Innovators for hosting and moderating a great session in Denver. We had some great conversation! Innovation that actually moves the business forward isn’t about slogans or frameworks — it’s about how teams work every day. That was my biggest takeaway from the session. The companies gaining real momentum aren’t relying on sporadic bursts of creativity; they’re tightening their operating rhythms so they can spot opportunities faster and act on them with less friction. From a global marketing excellence and transformation lens, this is the real unlock: building teams, processes, and decision paths that make progress repeatable. Not louder. Not bigger. Just consistently better. When you get that right, innovation becomes a natural output of the system — not a special event.

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