MeasureUp, IAB's largest marketing measurement conference turned three in New Zealand this year, and was bigger and better than ever featuring keynote speakers from Google, Meta and knOOH, high and low data quick takes and an interactive Council-led workshop. Thank you to the IAB New Zealand Data, Privacy & Measurement Council for creating this flagship industry event. If you couldn't be there on the day, here are some of the top outtakes from 2026.
In New Zealand, three years in, the industry has stopped talking about why measurement matters, and is focussing on measurement that works - and how it can be made to work harder. IAB US's State of Data 2026 report found 75% of buy-side marketers felt their leading measurement approaches - incrementality, attribution, MMM - were falling short, so we gathered 17 international and local industry experts to share their perspectives.
Measurement must evolve with technology. Stop counting clicks and start proving growth.
Eby Jose, Meta's Marketing Science Partner, told the room to stop counting clicks. He opened with the number that should concern every CFO: proving ROI is marketers' #1 challenge, and when profits fall, marketing gets cut roughly 45% of the time. Clicks aren't helping - 60% of searches now end without one, Gen Z is twice as likely to make a purchase without clicking than other generations, and there is a 15-25% decline in organic web traffic as a result of AI Search.
Eby's recommendation was stop treating attribution as truth because it shows correlation, not causation. Build a "suite of truth" instead - attribution for speed, MMM for scope, experiments to calibrate both. Incrementality measurement tells you what made the purchase happen and you can think of incrementality as a ladder of options that get closer to measuring true business value as you climb. The journey to a deeper understanding of marketing effectiveness has four parts.
Assess: Establish a baseline by evaluating your current measurement approach.
Meta Keynote Resources:
Introducing Meta Ads AI Connectors: Manage Your Meta Ads From the AI Tools You Already Use.
Measurement 360: Building a ‘suite of truth’ to capture the incremental impact of advertising.
Google X Tracksuit: Brand is the Moat
Google's Strategy & Insights Manager Angus Boulton and Data & Measurement Lead Eduardo Maia picked up the thread for the agentic search era. Their argument was that when an AI agent makes the recommendation, brand becomes the deciding factor. Consumers won't accept a non-preferred brand without pushing back, and they'll value trust four times more than the cheapest option on the table. Cue 'The Trust Line' - every purchase decision is now governed by an invisible frontier.
Building that trust comes down to four things: brand early and often, hook attention, make people feel something, then ask them to act. And Search - brand query growth is still one of the cleanest proxies for sales available.
Sam Brough, Head of Brand at Tracksuit, joined Angus and Eduardo for a fireside chat about the new Google X Tracksuit Return on Awareness Study and how brand correlates with share of Search gains.
High Data, Low Data Quick Takes
A good game's a fast game as they say, and to keep it punchy we introduced a series of high and low data quick takes with local marketing leaders Carolyn Luey from Contact Energy and Susan Benseman from ANZ Bank (high data) and Helen Bosley from Fletcher Living and Sarah Wood from realestate.co.nz (low data case study).
Measurement Leaves the Screen
OOHMAA's Kath Mitchell kicking the afternoon off with a 'wake and shake' espresso martini and a reminder that four out of five people leave home every day, and New Zealand's out-of-home market worth $233m, up nearly 10% year on year has not historically had a shared measurement currency to prove it. The answer is knOOH - an independently run reach, frequency and impressions standard built for New Zealand.
The type of measurement knOOH provides is called Opportunity To See, or OTS. That means knOOH is calculating the number of people who have a realistic chance to see one panel, or a combination of panels, within a campaign period.
knOOH uses a mixed-model methodology, powered by lots of different data inputs and data types. The basic principle of building the people movement model in knOOH is to take small scale data sets that have high spatial and/or temporal granularity and scale those data sets with high volume data, to be representative of the full population. All of the data and models are stored locally in New Zealand, by a 3rd party, independent data company, with 10 years' experience in building OOH AMS systems for New Zealand.
Kath brought the energy with coffee, vodka and a live interactive demonstration of knOOH in action led by Tim Macmillan from Mortal. You can download some of the helpful knOOH resources referenced at MeasureUp below:
📸 See if you can spot yourself, or any of your work friends in the event photo gallery
🎧 If you're more of a fan of audio on the go, you can listen to some of the highlights in the IAB NZ Insights Podcast thanks to the power of Google NotebookLM and AI.
Please note: This is an automatically generated AI podcast based on the event experience and not the direct perspectives of the presenters, organisations involved or IAB New Zealand.
A big thank you to our sponsors Google, Meta and knOOH and to the IAB New Zealand Data, Privacy & Measurement Council team for bringing MeasureUp 2026 to life. A special thank you to Qassem Naim, Founder Team Circle and Council Chair and Travena Addenbrooke, Council Vice Chair for their leadership and expert panel moderation.
Until next year 🎉 📚