The frozen pizza switcher era of advertising

By pairing purchase data with advanced AI tools that process behavior in real time, advertisers on the open internet have sparked a revolution.

The open internet has always given buyers unmatched options to target audiences and measure campaigns. But this has not been a magic bullet. Data quality can be opaque, and advertisers have historically relied on post-campaign reporting to assess its performance and course-correct on the following buy.

In this world, finding the right person, at the right moment and at the right time was not a seamless enterprise. It was a complex, patchwork process across a fragmented ecosystem.

Now, for the first time, brands across virtually all categories have access to purchase data that shows which audiences are transacting — as well as the intelligence and tooling to optimize campaigns in real time to drive incrementality. Data-driven marketing is not simply about understanding performance, but directly changing it as a campaign unfolds. This revolution prioritizes real sales outcomes and demands greater accountability against billions in annual ad spend.

From passive reporting to performance engine

When defining a target audience, the relevance and predictive power of the data seed (the initial set of data) itself are the strongest indicators of success. If the goal is to reach future quick-serve restaurant (QSR) patrons, the most valuable signal is a recent verified history of QSR purchases. High-fidelity transaction data is no longer a differentiator; it is the minimum requirement for building audiences that drive measurable business outcomes.

But the real opportunity emerges when data doesn’t merely support a strategy, but informs it.

With vertical-agnostic purchase data and the right AI tools, marketers can begin looking beyond their siloed category to identify broader purchase patterns and insights. Discovering that a QSR brand is losing share to frozen pizza in grocery stores, and responding by activating a frozen pizza switchers audience, turns measurement from a passive reporting function into an active performance engine.

Selecting the right audience, however, is only the first step. Ensuring that the audience remains performant requires a live feedback mechanism. Real-time sales data provides exactly that.

Understanding whether an impression resulted in a sale empowers DSPs to continuously refine targeting in-flight. Ad spend can then shift toward high-propensity buyers or switchers, serving impressions to customers who have recently purchased and are likely to buy again.

This is not theoretical. A real-time measurement loop quickly reveals what is working and what is not, transforming campaign management from a reactive process into a proactive one. It creates a direct line between the audience strategy and the sales results it generates.

The future: verified outcomes and actionability

Measuring and optimizing in-flight to verified purchase signals will define the next generation of performance advertising. Marketers who have adopted this approach early are already seeing the clear advantage of a fully interconnected strategy.

Marketers identify the highest-quality data to target. They optimize in real time based on actual purchasers. They extract insights from these behaviors and use them to develop new, more predictive audience segments. And this full-cycle process will soon be automated end-to-end as AI and tooling continue to advance.

The next era of advertising belongs to systems that act, not systems that observe. The mandate today is to ensure that brands have access to the highest-fidelity data for targeting, optimization and measurement. Doing so positions marketers to drive superior outcomes and to future-proof their performance strategy.

Implementing these new data and measurement approaches generates a higher return on investment, lower cost per acquisition, incremental revenue for the portfolio and a steady pipeline of net new customers. In a market where every impression must earn its place, actionability and dynamic capabilities with data and measurement are table stakes. This is how marketers grow and defend their marketing investments.

This op-ed represents the views and opinions of the author and not of The Current, a division of The Trade Desk, or The Trade Desk. The appearance of the op-ed on The Current does not constitute an endorsement by The Current or The Trade Desk.