Stacking Growth (The B2B Go-to-Market Podcast)
Proving Ad Impact in 2026
Stacking Growth (The B2B Go-to-Market Podcast)
•November 25, 2025•54 min
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Stacking Growth (The B2B Go-to-Market Podcast)•Nov 25, 2025
Why It Matters
Proving true ad incrementality equips B2B teams to justify spend, optimize CPMs, and align with finance, accelerating growth in saturated markets.
Key Takeaways
- •Lift tests reveal true incrementality beyond last-touch attribution.
- •Meta, Reddit, YouTube deliver lower CPMs than LinkedIn.
- •Server‑side APIs fix mobile‑desktop measurement gaps.
- •ABM can be unbundled with flexible audience tools.
- •Share of search predicts pipeline growth.
Pulse Analysis
As LinkedIn and Google ad inventories become increasingly costly, B2B marketers are forced to look beyond traditional demand‑gen playgrounds. Platforms such as Meta, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok offer access to broader professional audiences at markedly lower CPMs, but the shift introduces new measurement complexities. Understanding where the audience lives—mobile versus desktop—and reconciling cross‑device attribution gaps are now critical, prompting a migration toward server‑side conversion APIs and conversion event pipelines that capture signal loss in real time.
Incrementality testing has emerged as the gold standard for proving ad value in this fragmented ecosystem. By deploying holdout groups, geographic lift studies, and account‑list split experiments, marketers can isolate the causal impact of spend on pipeline and revenue, moving past last‑touch attribution’s inherent biases. These rigorous frameworks not only surface true lift but also generate the quantitative evidence finance and executive teams demand, fostering faster budget approvals and more agile media planning.
The strategic payoff extends beyond measurement. Unbundling ABM into modular audience‑targeting tools enables firms to tap untapped total addressable markets without the overhead of monolithic platforms. Coupled with leading indicators like share of search, B2B teams can forecast demand creation and scale efficiently, even for niche verticals. Ultimately, a disciplined, omnichannel testing regime empowers growth leaders to allocate spend where it truly drives revenue, ensuring sustainable competitive advantage in a crowded digital landscape.
Episode Description
This roundtable explores how B2B teams can use modern demand strategies, B2C channels, and incrementality testing to prove true ad impact in 2026. The conversation highlights omni-channel expansion beyond LinkedIn, data-driven measurement, and practical ways to validate lift across pipeline and revenue.
Speakers and Roles
Matt Sciannella – Host and practitioner running paid media for multiple B2B clients; shares real client use cases, lift results, and practical frameworks for measurement and experimentation.
Keith Putnam-Delaney – CEO of Primer; former Dropbox growth leader; expert in B2B expansion into B2C channels, audience targeting, mobile–desktop measurement problems, match rates, and lift testing.
Authority: Both speakers bring hands-on experience running B2B paid programs at scale and deep insight into attribution limits, ABM constraints, and cross-channel growth strategies.
Topics Covered
Rising costs and saturation in traditional B2B channels (LinkedIn, Google).
Why B2B brands must expand into B2C channels like Meta, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok.
Mobile vs. desktop measurement gaps and cross-device limitations.
Signal loss, attribution decay, and the need for server-side events.
How to validate true impact using lift tests and incrementality.
CPM efficiency comparisons across channels.
ABM unbundling and alternatives to large, monolithic ABM platforms.
Using holdout groups, geographic lift, and omnichannel testing strategies.
Real client examples showing lift in inbound, share of search, and revenue.
How audience targeting tools unlock TAM expansion outside LinkedIn.
Questions This Video Helps Answer
How do B2B marketers prove real ad impact without relying on last-touch attribution?
How can brands expand beyond LinkedIn and still target ICP buyers effectively?
What causes demand generation inefficiency and how do you fix it?
How do mobile–desktop and cross-device gaps distort performance data?
What is the right way to design lift tests or incrementality experiments?
How can small TAM companies still scale using B2C channels?
What alternative ABM workflows exist beyond large enterprise platforms?
How should B2B teams interpret rising CPMs and shrinking reach?
Jobs, Roles, and Responsibilities Mentioned
B2B growth marketing
Growth teams
Sales operations managers
Revenue operations roles
VPs of Marketing
Regional sales directors
Medical device surgeons (ICP example)
Marketing, sales, finance
Infosec teams
PLG teams
Field marketing
Outbound sales teams
Key Takeaways
Attribution alone cannot prove channel value; lift tests reveal true incrementality.
B2B audiences exist far beyond LinkedIn, and CPM efficiency is often dramatically higher on Meta, Reddit, and YouTube.
Mobile-heavy consumption breaks MTA models; server-side signals and conversion APIs are now essential.
ABM can be unbundled using smaller, more flexible tools and alternative data sources.
Expanding TAM and using audience targeting unlocks more reach and stronger pipeline outcomes.
Share of search is a powerful leading indicator for demand creation impact.
Omnichannel experimentation paired with structured test design improves confidence with finance and executive teams.
Frameworks and Concepts Mentioned
Incrementality testing
Holdout groups
Channel-based lift tests
Geographic lift tests
Account list split testing
Leading vs. lagging indicators
Share of search analysis
Server-side conversion APIs (CAPI)
Cross-device measurement
Audience match rates
ABM unbundling
CPM efficiency analysis
Show Notes
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