Attend any industry conference, and you’ll see a range of presentations highlighting new technologies or approaches to measurement which promise to give advertisers new clarity on where their investment is going, and what it’s delivering. You’ll also struggle to find even one panel where participants don’t cite measurement as an area which needs significant improvement.
That’s not to say that the former selection of speakers are being dishonest. But in a fragmented media landscape, solutions often cover one channel, or a particular subset of channels. This means marketers have to work across a range of different solutions, which brings its own challenges. At the same time, fundamental issues around trust and data quality can hamper the efficacy of measurement tools.
Industry trade group the IAB says that if we really want to bring confidence, clarity, and consistency to modern media measurement, the industry needs to work together to fix some of these core underlying issues which plague measurement products and methodologies. To that end, the IAB today announced the launch of ‘Project Eidos’ at its Annual Leadership Meeting, which it describes as a coordinated, multi-year, industry-wide effort to fundamentally modernise advertising and marketing measurement.
“While advanced measurement is widely used across the industry, it’s still falling short of its core promise. The time for a single-channel fix or a one-off framework has passed,” said David Cohen, CEO of the IAB. “It’s time to address the foundational issues that have quietly undermined measurement for years.”
Beyond the measurement patchwork
Project Eidos’ stated aims at launch are fairly broad. The IAB says it wants to replace the existing patchwork of channel-by-channel measurement standards and solutions with an interoperable approach, which will use common constructs and consistent language to harmonise and unify measurement across channels.
The trade group will also look to develop a “unified but flexible” approach to how exposures are connected to outcomes across channels, enabling consistent attribution and incrementality measurement. And marketing mix modelling (MMM) will be given specific focus, as the IAB wants to create a “modern, comparable approach to MMM” which will work across diverse channels, strategies, and tactics.
It’s suggested that AI will play a significant role. The IAB State of Data 2026 report, released today, shows that buyers believe AI can materially improve advanced measurement within the next couple of years, potentially unlocking $32 billion in media investment in that time period. But while they’re bullish on AI’s potential, marketers also say they have significant concerns around legal and security risks, accuracy, and data quality.
Angelina Eng, VP of the IAB’s Measurement Center, says this demonstrated the need for Project Eidos. “We need to tackle problems that are systemic and foundational,” she said. “Past workarounds and band-aid approaches have allowed the underlying issues to become worse over time.”
All aboard?
Of course, it’s one thing to talk about fixing measurement’s foundational ills — if that were straightforward, it would have been done already.
What’s significant here though is the cross-industry collaboration. Participating companies announced by the IAB include Amazon Ads, Google, Havas Media Network, Meta, the NFL, Paramount, Pinterest, Publicis Media, The Trade Desk, TikTok, Unilever, and WPP Media. There are some gaps, notably Omnicom Media and the major broadcasters and streamers (outside of Paramount), but it’s a promising start.
Internally, the IAB will put plenty of resources into the initiative. Project Eidos will pull industry leaders from every IAB Center of Excellence, including board members from its Commerce, Experience, Measurement, and Media centres.
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