Social media is where brands are discovered, considered, and increasingly bought. Yet despite its reach and influence, it’s still too often boxed in as a brand awareness tool, judged by likes, follows, and surface-level engagement. In reality, it’s where brands can earn attention, build credibility, and spark action, sometimes in the same swipe. But making that case requires more than instinct. It requires proof.
To explore how agencies are rethinking the value of social, we spoke with David Rossitter, SVP of Analytics at VaynerMedia, during a recent webinar, “Driving Success with Cross-Platform Measurement," cohosted by Ad Age and DISQO. Moderated by DISQO’s President of Media Effectiveness, Stephen Jepson, the discussion unpacked how Vayner uses cross-platform measurement, creative agility, and person-level benchmarks to move social out of the reach-only box and into the performance conversation.
Here’s what he had to say about scaling measurement, unlocking social’s lower-funnel potential, and connecting brand strategy with business outcomes.
At Vayner, analytics is a daily practice. We approach it with a mindset we call AIM—Analyze, Ideate, Make. That means we’re constantly looking at performance data, interpreting what it tells us, and then making strategic and creative recommendations based on those insights.
This process allows our creative teams to think more analytically and gives our strategists the tools to shape stories about who is really connecting with our clients’ brands. And it’s not just about pulling data; it's about using that data to fuel the entire creative and strategic process.
Because we operate in both paid and organic environments, we’re focused on building a seamless consumer journey. It’s about linking and learning from those efforts quickly so we can keep evolving the work. Being social-first means we’re not just reacting to performance but designing for it.
DISQO’s social media benchmarks have had an impact on multiple levels. First, they give us a strong starting point in conversations with clients, asking, “What is social going to do for my business?” One piece of the data I found especially valuable is how DISQO breaks down performance by brand maturity—new, emerging, and established. That structure gives us a way to explain social impact in context, and it helps our clients gain confidence in where social fits within their overall strategy.
The stat that stood out to me was the over two-times lift in unaided awareness. But it’s not just the magnitude of the number; the segmentation by maturity makes it useful. It lets us say, “Here’s what you can expect from social media, given where your brand is today.” That’s especially helpful when clients are unsure whether social is delivering anything beyond reach.
Then, there’s often hesitation when talking to clients about paid and organic social. The default view is that it’s a top-of-funnel channel for reaching new audiences. However, the lower-funnel metrics in DISQO’s benchmarks—like brand search, competitive search, and site visitation—help us prove that social impacts the entire funnel. We’re now building these benchmarks into client conversations moving forward, sparking more internal awareness about using this data to discuss lower-funnel performance.
They also open up opportunities to discuss incrementality and testing, which is a huge benefit of having such a robust dataset. When I saw that the benchmarks included 1,650 campaigns over the past few years, I knew this was a foundation we could build on. It gives us room to ask better questions, design stronger learning agendas, and push testing strategies in smarter ways.
One more thing I want to highlight is how these benchmarks help us onboard new clients. Not everyone comes in with internal benchmarks in place. And while I completely agree that your own benchmarks are the most important to build over time, having this dataset gives us a place to start. It helps anchor those early conversations in the first 30, 60, and 90 days on where social fits, what opportunities we’re seeing, and what we will test and measure. That early structure is invaluable. All in all, these benchmarks have become a critical tool for our team.
For us, it all comes back to the learning agenda. When we introduce normative benchmarks, the value becomes clear very quickly. Clients often come to us a few months into a campaign and say, “We’re seeing lift, and that feels good, but how do we know how this compares to our category or competitors?” That’s where these benchmarks help us guide the conversation.
I often go back to the new versus emerging versus established brand segmentation. That framework has been incredibly helpful for us in breaking down client expectations based on brand maturity. It gives us a clearer picture of where a client should be and what kind of impact is reasonable to expect.
Benchmarks also help us refine KPIs. We often bring together several layers of data, including live campaign data from DISQO, what we’re learning from social listening, and the client’s internal data. We then merge that with normative benchmarks and that combination shapes everything from creative briefs to audience cohorts. It informs who we target and how we evolve those tactics over time.
More than a one-and-done snapshot, we treat benchmarks as a working part of our larger dataset. They sit alongside our daily and weekly reporting, and we use them to track progress, guide optimizations, and reinforce accountability. More than a reference point, they’re a key part of how we operate.
At VaynerMedia, our core ethos is to be the most accountable agency possible. Our role is to drive business goals, and measurement plays a central part. We are deeply integrated with our media teams and work hand in hand to analyze data consistently. As I mentioned, we use the learning agenda as a framework to capture daily, weekly, and monthly insights.
A key part of this is not waiting three months for results. We want to generate real-time insights and help our clients understand what’s working and what’s not, every day. That’s the shift we are making toward proactive, real-time measurement rather than retrospective reporting.
Some manual tasks, like weekly reporting, will evolve as we move further into AI and automation, which makes it even more important to have the right measurement tools in place. Measurement needs to be built to support always-on learning and incremental progress.
That’s especially true when it comes to social. Understanding the incrementality driven by social campaigns is critical, and our clients need to be fully informed about how their efforts impact KPIs. First-party measurement strategies help make that possible. We work with clients across both paid and organic efforts to start with a benchmark and then use that as a foundation to grow. The goal is never to stand still. It's about continually beating those benchmarks and raising the bar.
For us, that means helping our clients become exceptional by challenging them to build on their own benchmarks and evolve their strategies over time.
One of the biggest factors we talk about with clients is creative. This often determines whether a campaign can drive brand and performance outcomes.
We hear the term "brand performance" used a lot, and how we define it is simple. It’s the creative that builds brand equity while also driving lower-funnel actions. The way we frame it for clients is that strong creative helps establish the brand while also moving consumers closer to conversion. It’s about integrating calls to action, integrating reasons to believe, and doing it in a way that resonates with consumers. When the creative resonates, it becomes a game-changer. It gets people locked in on your product and gives them a reason to take the next step in the purchase path.
That’s a big part of our thinking at VaynerMedia. As we dig deeper into DISQO’s benchmarks, we see even more alignment around brand and performance. These benchmarks help us define impact and validate why we should think differently about how we brief and measure campaigns.
Of course, there will still be reach plays, and that kind of content will always have a place. However, platforms like Meta and TikTok operate across the entire funnel. So, we’re ensuring that our briefs, budgets, and campaign evaluations reflect that. We want to treat social as a full-funnel environment, not just a top-of-funnel tactic.
We approach this in two major ways, and DISQO plays a significant role in one of them. The first is a full campaign, year-long brand health tracking solutions we’ve built for brands. The second is working with a holistic measurement partner like DISQO to build an always-on mindset.
Clients are constantly asking, “How is TikTok performing compared to Meta? What are we learning from TikTok versus CTV?” They want to understand holistically how these platforms and channels work together and what those insights mean. We’re encouraging our clients to go further into that, from both a brand health and performance lens.
I’ve been in this industry for about 25 years, starting on the client side and now working on the agency side, and it’s interesting how much this is starting to feel like a return to fundamentals. In a lot of ways, what’s old is new again. Matched market studies are having a resurgence, and so is incrementality testing. These things had faded with the rise of cookie-based MTA, but now we’re seeing the limits of those approaches.
Beyond that, a lot of self-grading happens when individual platforms have a natural incentive to tell you their tools are working. Today, when clients want to understand the impact of Meta, for example, we’ll still run a brand lift or conversion lift study with Meta, but we’ll also recommend incrementality testing. The goal is to validate or, if needed, challenge what the platform is reporting. That’s where independent measurement becomes so valuable.
Ultimately, our goal is to be a trusted partner for our clients. We want to help them make smarter decisions about where to invest, which requires clarity across platforms. That’s why DISQO’s benchmarks are so helpful, giving us an independent, unbiased point of reference that helps us cut through the noise and see what is really working.
At VaynerMedia, we look for two key things. First, our partner needs to go beyond just delivering data, setting the foundation for a cohesive and collaborative relationship. We uncover real insights when there is synergy between the agency and the brand health measurement partner. This is when we see changes in how clients approach platform strategy or creative development. The work then becomes more meaningful, and we see measurable improvements in campaign execution. So, having that kind of relationship really brings out the best in the data.
The second piece is about simplifying complexity. With the right partner, a lot of the heavy lifting that comes with analyzing complex, multi-channel data becomes more manageable. Our industry faces a real risk of analysis paralysis. We are flooded with data. However, when a measurement partner truly understands their platform and helps interpret what the data actually means for the client, that changes everything.
One of the biggest things we’ve come to appreciate about DISQO is the technology. The deterministic nature of the relationships you’ve built is a game-changer. That kind of person-level data unlocks real visibility, which we haven’t seen executed this well elsewhere.
A lot of platforms are trying to build toward the same thing, but DISQO has already created a model that’s understood not only internally but across the agencies you work with. That shared understanding of what the technology can deliver and what it makes possible is incredibly important.
Having spent years working with various measurement partners, I’ve seen the value of rigorous research. What DISQO has added to the conversation, particularly around how you engage with platforms, is an entirely new layer. When our team learned more about your technical capabilities, especially how you can see exposure and behaviors across platforms in a deterministic way, there was a real sense of excitement.
That visibility is unbelievably valuable for an agency like VaynerMedia, where we’re socially first and always looking to activate across platforms. It allows us to measure what matters and drive action confidently.
What’s interesting about navigating multiple sources of truth is that everything ultimately comes back to the initial KPI. That’s the foundation for how we judge campaign effectiveness. If the campaign focuses on lower-funnel objectives, we start by asking whether it drives sales or generates incremental revenue, and that becomes our primary filter.
As the campaign progresses, we shift into optimization mode, and that is where it gets nuanced. Not every metric we track is a headline number. Some are simply nice to have, but others can guide us toward better performance by helping us make smarter decisions in real time. That’s the key: figuring out which of those metrics contributes to improving the core objective.
Working through multiple data sources is all about balancing what each one tells us. We need to distill the signal from the noise, and that’s where the analytics teams play a critical role. We look at a wide range of KPIs and translate them in a way that supports media, strategy, and creative teams. The goal is to help them understand what is actually driving impact so they can make informed optimizations.
Learning agendas are critical to every successful campaign and to every strong agency-brand partnership. If you don’t have a learning agenda set up at the start to define success, you run into problems later. We’ve seen it happen where you get to the end of a campaign or a renewal conversation, and even if the campaign drove millions in sales, you still ask, “Did we succeed at what we set out to do?”
That’s why alignment on goals from the beginning is so important. Measurement only becomes meaningful when you tie it to those original objectives. Without that structure in place, it is hard to evaluate outcomes in a way that helps you grow and improve.
I like thinking of the learning agenda as a compass. It’s a great way to think about how learning agendas give direction throughout a campaign. They guide decision-making and help keep everyone aligned on what we are trying to achieve.