How to Link Brand and Performance Outcomes in Premium Video

Measuring ad content, creative, and full funnel results with Paramount 

In a streaming world defined by choice and fragmentation, the most valuable audiences are no longer found by chance. They’re earned through storytelling, scale, and strategy. For advertisers looking to drive results, premium video offers something rare: an environment where content quality meets audience intent.

But delivering reach is not enough. Brands are asking whether their campaigns truly drive business outcomes, and they expect media partners to prove it. That expectation is growing as marketing teams face more pressure to deliver both brand equity and measurable outcomes.

At Paramount, performance and impact are not separate goals. They are two sides of the same strategy. That mindset has reshaped how the company supports advertisers across streaming, live events, and traditional television.

We spoke with Jennifer Strapp, Vice President of Audience Impact and Intelligence, during a recent DISQO and Ad Age webinar to understand how Paramount is redefining what premium video can deliver. She shared how her team helps advertisers navigate data fragmentation, track outcomes across platforms, and prove that storytelling drives results. 

Q&A With Jennifer Strapp, Paramount

Q: Tell us about your team and how you approach measuring advertising performance at Paramount.

My team is Performance and Impact, and we focus on exactly that: the performance and impact of advertising. We want to prove to advertisers that Paramount’s premium content helps build brands and drives outcomes simultaneously. Every advertiser has different KPIs. Some are launching new products, others are trying to solidify their position in the market. Some want to drive emotional resonance, while others focus on competitive differentiation. We help them reach those goals using premium video as a driver of both perception and performance.

Q: What is Paramount doing to help advertisers connect outcomes across platforms? And what role do sports and tentpole moments play in that?

From a traditional ad experience, we’re running content across all our platforms and measuring it holistically to get a clear picture of how everything works together and drive cumulative impact. We’re working closely with DISQO to support that measurement.

Our strong marketing team, the Paramount Brand Studio, builds cohesive campaigns across platforms. They bring together our IP, talent, and premium content to elevate brand messaging and take it to the next level.

Beyond that, sports and tentpole events are a huge part of who we are as a company. These moments don’t just reflect culture; they drive and create it. That’s why we’re committed to expanding the reach of this content across our platforms and ensuring our advertisers come along for the ride.

Q: How are you balancing brand-building and performance goals in premium video?

I love this question because last year, we told advertisers we were going to prove that Paramount delivers performance, and we did. With an always-on attribution tool that gives our clients transparent performance measurement, they can see exactly how each part of their buy performs across all our properties.

That’s in addition to brand building. We work with a wide range of brands, each with different marketing goals, and we know how powerful Paramount’s premium entertainment content is in supporting those efforts. We’re testing and proving that value to clients every day, with our team fully invested in driving results across the entire marketing funnel.

Q: Can you share an example of a premium video campaign that delivered strong brand outcomes?

One standout example comes from the Taylor Sheridan Universe, which, of course, includes Yellowstone. From an advertising perspective, aligning with a powerhouse like Yellowstone was a no-brainer.

We partnered with DISQO to measure a series sponsorship for a well-known snack brand. Because of the strength of that alignment, we developed custom content that tied directly into the show. The results spoke for themselves. About 80% of viewers said the brand was a great fit for the series, and the campaign drove four times the amount of search activity for the brand. This clearly demonstrated how premium content can move perception and behavior when paired with the right creative and context.

Q: How are you addressing cross-stream duplication and attribution across platforms like linear, CTV, streaming, and social?

We’ve implemented always-on, multi-platform outcome solutions for our advertising clients, which has been a significant step forward. For the first time, we can match linear outcomes data with digital outcomes data that had traditionally been more accessible.

That level of consistency is a big win, but single-source, full-funnel measurement remains a top priority. It’s especially exciting to work with partners like DISQO who support that vision and help us continue moving the industry forward.

Q: What are your clients expecting when it comes to measurement, and how do you help them understand full funnel impact?

It’s become a standard ask, and the demand has never been higher. Clients are also rightly expecting their investment to deliver on KPIs. They’re giving us their money to do something, and we have to prove that it’s actually doing something for them. Advertisers can spend their money and place their ads in so many places. For us, it’s vital to show them that premium content is the most effective place to run their campaigns, whether the goals are brand building or performance. As a result, we’re doing a lot of full-funnel measurement to demonstrate that premium video delivers results across the entire funnel.

Q: How is Paramount using data to differentiate, and how do you go about integrating client or third-party sources?

We use third-party data sets alongside our first-party exposure and viewing data to create a more complete picture. One of our biggest advancements was digitizing our linear logs, allowing us to offer consistent measurement across platforms.

Today, our linear attribution mirrors our digital attribution. The methodologies are aligned, and we can work with the same research partners across the board. This means we can measure all of our premium video in a familiar and actionable way for clients. We’re still in the early stages, but excited to keep growing and evolving this work.

Q: How has DISQO helped you measure brand and performance impact across platforms?

We work with DISQO on a lot of custom studies that give us deeper insights into the impact of our branded content and premium integrations, most of which are cross-platform executions. They have truly helped us elevate our insights and prove the value of what makes Paramount unique as a publisher.

Q: How do DISQO’s insights managers support your team?

There are people at DISQO who truly feel like an extension of our team, and I really mean that. They’re incredibly helpful, not just in delivering what we need for specific campaign studies, but in helping us establish norms and shape how we tell our overall performance story.

They’ve been instrumental in helping us go beyond individual campaign insights to build a more complete narrative based on the full set of studies we’ve done together. That allows us to offer clients a much more robust story than a single-platform brand lift alone. It’s a more premium offering, fitting for the premium experience we aim to deliver.

Q: What’s the biggest challenge in achieving a complete view of media measurement, and how can the industry work together to solve it?

There are two big challenges we’ve partially solved. One is cross-platform measurement, which we addressed by digitizing our linear logs. The other is having a full-funnel solution that measures all of our media.

We’ve taken major steps in the right direction, and just like audience measurement is available for all of our content, I believe we’ll eventually get to a place where impact measurement is available for every piece of ad content as well. We must also accept that not all ads and brands are the same. As we’ve discussed, different brands, products, and creatives have different KPIs. There isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all solution. We need to move forward with flexible measurement frameworks that reflect those differences.

Q: With so many sources of truth, how do you identify the right insights to optimize campaigns now and in the future?

When we talk about what insights are the right ones to share, sometimes they’re not the ones you set out to find. There’s often more in the data if you take the time to dig deeper. That’s where you uncover stories you didn’t initially expect.

Of course, we always start with the campaign goals and look for what works best there. But when you go further into the data, you sometimes discover that the real story is something else entirely. Those deeper insights help both the advertiser and us as a publisher. They show us how to approach things differently next time, what could have worked better, or which audience truly connected with the message and was most impacted by it.

Q: What role does understanding incremental lift play in your measurement framework?

We work with many ubiquitous brands. You’re not necessarily going to raise awareness levels for them. But when the campaign is focused on other KPIs, that’s where we can really drive impact and guide optimizations.

Take a brand like McDonald’s. Everyone knows it, so increasing awareness isn’t the goal. But, we can move other key performance indicators tied to the campaigns, like favorability, consideration, or intent. That’s where incremental lift becomes really valuable. 

Why It Matters

Jennifer’s perspective reflects a shift in what advertisers expect from their media partners. Premium content must do more than deliver scale. It must deliver outcomes. That requires transparency, full-funnel measurement, and a commitment to proving what works.

Paramount is investing in tools and partnerships to meet that demand. With solutions like always-on attribution and deterministic measurement from DISQO, they are helping brands understand the full impact of their media investments.