Proving the Value of CTV and Premium Video Advertising

From exposure to action, explore how IHG measures what matters most with DISQO

As undivided viewer attention becomes increasingly scarce and spread across screens, premium video offers something rare: intentionality. It’s where people go for appointment viewing, immersive storytelling, and live cultural moments that capture hearts and minds. 

This creates a powerful environment for advertisers to connect with viewers at scale, especially when paired with measurement strategies that stretch beyond views, tracking everything from shifts in consumer sentiment to bottom-of-the-funnel outcomes. 

To explore how brands can harness this opportunity, we spoke with Richard Haymore, Director of Campaign Effectiveness at IHG Hotels & Resorts, during a recent webinar cohosted by Ad Age and featuring additional panelists from Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount. Here’s what he shared about balancing brand and performance goals, the power of contextual alignment, and how IHG uses deterministic data to optimize media impact.

Q&A With Richard Haymore, IHG Hotels & Resorts

Q: How does IHG think about premium video as part of its broader media strategy?

IHG is a large family of hotel brands, with about 20 in total. Some are very well known, like Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. Others like Voco or Indigo are a little less familiar to the average traveler. That variety means we have to tailor our approach depending on campaign objectives.

Premium video, especially CTV, plays a critical role in our media strategy, allowing us to take an audience-first approach. For broad awareness campaigns, like with our IHG parent brand, we often look to live sports to reach broad audiences, including business and leisure travelers, to generate scale. For other brands, where we might have more focused goals like generating consideration or moving brand perceptions, premium video is a great tool to drive those specific goals in a focused manner.

Beyond that, it's about more than choosing the right content, aligning our message to specific audiences. We use different types of TV environments to reach different people, and CTV gives us the flexibility to do that at scale.

Q: How do you balance using premium video to reach brand and performance goals?

We primarily use premium video as a brand-building tool, but there is nuance there. We understand the value of building strong brands because it makes our performance marketing more effective. For the IHG parent brand, we are striving to make it a household name. That means our focus is often on moving big, broad awareness metrics.  

For Holiday Inn Express, on the other hand, we are not trying to build basic awareness. Instead, we are trying to influence consideration, intent, or brand perceptions. We like to emphasize features like our breakfast. We want consumers to know about that and remember it when booking.

Premium video helps us get those messages in front of the right audience at the right time. We don’t want to send a breakfast-focused ad to a luxury traveler where it may not resonate, and we avoid that with the precision and scale of connected TV.

Q: Can you share a real-world example of a premium video campaign that drove strong results for IHG? What made it successful?

One example I will share is around the IHG parent brand. One of our biggest priorities is helping people recognize the IHG name. We have many well-known brands in our portfolio, but IHG, as a parent brand, is not as widely recognized as some of our competitors. So we’ve leaned into premium video to help shift that.

Over the past year or two, we’ve run campaigns across multiple formats, including linear TV, cable, and connected TV. Taking an audience-first approach, we develop different creative for different types of travelers—business, luxury, or mainstream—and serve those messages to matched audiences through CTV. That targeting is incredibly valuable. 

Measurement has been a big part of this. With DISQO, we can see how different creatives perform with different audiences. We can also understand how ad exposure influences various outcomes across the funnel, like driving search for IHG, website visits, and other key actions. The results show that this strategy works. People are beginning to connect the IHG name with the brands they already know, helping us move the needle on awareness and consideration in measurable ways. 

Q: How are you measuring performance across platforms?

We work closely with DISQO to bring together a consistent view of campaign performance. The value for us is understanding how our advertising works across different channels and platforms. That includes CTV, linear TV, social media, and more. One of the most valuable aspects of our partnership with DISQO is the real-time dashboard. I can look at performance by channel, partner, creative, or audience, and that gives us incredibly helpful insights we can act on immediately. I can share results with our marketing teams and help guide mid-flight campaign optimizations. 

Q: What are the biggest challenges you face with media measurement?

Simplicity is a big one. We have a great team, including many very smart statisticians and analysts, but not everyone is an expert in media. We need partners who can make complex insights easy to understand and apply.

The second challenge is speed.  If you wait too long to get results, you lose the opportunity to act on them. We need timely, directional insights that let us adjust while a campaign runs. 

The third is consistency. There is still a lot of fragmentation in the measurement space. DISQO has been really helpful for us in resolving those challenges and we would love to see more partners embrace openness and shared standards to help the entire industry.

Q: How should advertisers evolve their measurement strategies to better track the full-funnel impact of premium video?

For us, the most important thing is having a unified measurement system. It allows us to compare and understand the impact of campaigns across different platforms and creative executions. We want to see how exposure to an ad influences everything from awareness and consideration to site visitation and eventual conversion.

It’s also about combining our data with audience data from media partners to see how our ads perform on different networks and platforms, including linear and CTV. The ability to make those comparisons with a common methodology helps us make smarter investment decisions and improve performance.

Q: What has your experience been like using DISQO to measure cross-platform performance across the funnel?

It’s been incredibly valuable. One of the things I want to call out is how useful DISQO’s dashboard has been. As a brand partner, I have real-time access to insights that let me see campaign performance across digital touchpoints. I can look at channel, partner, creative, and audience metrics all in one place. 

That level of insight makes it easier to have meaningful conversations with our internal stakeholders. And it’s not just about reporting results. It’s about understanding what is working, why, and what we can do differently next time. For us, DISQO has been a key partner in helping us connect exposure to outcomes and build stronger campaigns over time.

Q: How do you balance all the different data sources to optimize effectively in real time and for future campaigns?

We do have multiple sources of truth, but the key is understanding the methodology behind each one. When you know how each source is constructed, what questions it answers, and what context it provides, it becomes easier to reconcile them.

I’ve been surprised at how often the different sources are directionally consistent. Even if the numbers do not match exactly, the story aligns. Understanding the differences and knowing how to use each one correctly gives us the confidence to act on the insights and build a cohesive narrative around campaign performance. 

Q: What role does understanding the incremental lift of brand and performance KPIs play in your overall measurement framework?

Incremental measurement plays a critical role. For us, those lifts tell us whether the campaign actually did something. We use that data to guide everything—from targeting strategies to creative deployment to media planning.

Those lifts tell us what changed because of the campaign, and without that, it is hard to know where to invest next. It’s not just about proving impact—it is about learning how to pivot and improve outcomes as we move forward in the campaign.

Q: Can you tell us more about how DISQO’s insights managers provide value for your teams?

We work with a great team at DISQO. People like Gered and Alexa have been incredibly helpful. What I really appreciate is how thoughtful and flexible they are, especially when the questions we get at the end of a campaign are different from the ones we asked at the beginning.

Stakeholders often shift priorities midway through or want to look at results through a new lens. The insights team at DISQO helps us navigate those situations. They bring a lot of context and help us get to answers quickly, even when the questions change. That kind of partnership is essential. It feels like an extension of our own team.

Why it matters

Richard’s approach reflects a larger shift among modern marketers. Brands are looking for more than reach and impressions. They want relevance, clarity, and proof that their media investments are driving impact. IHG is combining audience-first planning with deterministic measurement to do just that.

Premium video is a uniquely powerful tool for marketers, but its value is only realized when outcomes are captured and connected. With DISQO’s platform, brands can measure brand lift, behavioral actions, and conversion signals all in one place.