By Oz Etzioni

Performance is the heartbeat of modern marketing. Whether the goal is brand awareness or bottom-funnel conversion, every campaign is judged by its ability to deliver tangible, measurable outcomes. CMOs are being held accountable for ROI on every dollar, and brand leaders are under pressure to justify every line of the media budget.

But performance is no longer just about the last click or final sale. It’s about orchestrating outcomes across the entire consumer journey. Awareness must lift perception. Consideration must drive engagement. Conversion must be fast, efficient and scalable, and everything must be measurable.

To win in this paradigm, marketers must take control of the three pillars that drive performance:

1. ‍Media: Where your message appears.
2. Audiences: Who sees it.
3. Creative: What you say and how it resonates.

These ideas aren’t new, but the mandate to master them simultaneously, in real time, across various platforms and channels, is something we need to handle. Attention is fragmented. Privacy regulations are tightening. Walled gardens are growing taller. And the cost of inefficiency is steeper than ever.

Performance through intelligent orchestration

Performance marketing is no longer a specialized function. It’s the default standard, and achieving it at scale requires more than just smart tactics. It requires interconnected systems and technology partners that enable transparency and control across the media stack. Too often, brands operate within disconnected environments: a demand-side platform (DSP) for media, a data management platform (DMP) or customer data platform (CDP) for audiences, and creative tools and teams (internal or external) for content and messaging. Each works on its own timeline, guided by different signals and incentives. The result is friction, waste and missed opportunities.

And while human coordination can bridge some of these gaps, it doesn’t scale. As marketers pursue more channels, more audience segments and more creative versions (which is a positive sign of growth), the connective tissue begins to tear. Manual workflows collapse under pressure, and performance stalls.

The answer is not more tools — it’s smarter, unified orchestration. A system where audience intelligence informs creative strategy, creative performance shapes media decisions, and every element is optimized toward outcomes, not just outputs.

Rethinking the role of tech partners

Marketers must also challenge outdated norms in the tech vendor ecosystem. In the legacy model, many partners are incentivized by volume: more impressions, higher CPMs and more fees. But in the performance era, that model is misaligned. The most valuable partners today are those who prioritize impact over inventory, and build for outcomes, not just access.

A true performance-driven partner should:

●     Focus on ROI and incrementality, not just volume and reach.

●     Support testing and optimization at scale, without prohibitive costs.

●     Offer intelligence that improves over time.

●     Integrate seamlessly across channels, teams and platforms.

●     Deliver efficiency through connection — not act as a disconnected point solution.

And perhaps most importantly, they should align their business model with yours. If your partner only benefits when your media spend and impression volume increase, that’s not partnership, it’s friction. In contrast, a partner who wins when you perform better, grow faster and optimize smarter is one worth investing in.

The performance imperative

Winning in this landscape means thinking differently. Digital advertising can no longer be treated as a media problem. It’s a systemic performance challenge that spans data, creative, targeting, delivery and measurement. To thrive, marketers must invest in connected and agile platforms, empower their teams with tools that unlock cross-functional collaboration, and they must demand accountability from every partner in the stack. Lastly, they must move fast, and innovate faster, because their competition is already doing it.    

In a world where every tactic is measurable, marketers don’t need more complexity. They need clarity, control and partners who are as committed to outcomes as they are. That’s performance. Not as a department, not as a strategy, but as the engine of modern marketing. And it’s how every campaign should be planned, executed and relentlessly optimized — to not just compete, but to lead.

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Oz Etzioni

Oz Etzioni is the CEO and co-founder of Clinch, a company dedicated to improving the advertising industry with systemic solutions that simplify ad serving and creative personalization, and maximize operational efficiency of campaign activation.

Etzioni’s holistic approach to data-driven creative excellence has been exemplified throughout his career. Prior to Clinch, Etzioni helped to form and lead the user experience and innovation department at MRM, part of McCann Worldgroup in New York, where he created and managed digital experiences and campaign strategy for some of the world’s biggest brands, including ExxonMobil, US Army, Diageo, MasterCard, Verizon and General Motors.  

Etzioni holds a bachelor’s degree in design from Parsons, The New School, where he graduated with honors. He also studied industrial design at the Elisava School of Design in Barcelona, Spain. Before that, he spent 11 years in the Israeli Air Force, holding several command and management roles.