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A Day Focused on Greater Alignment, Innovation, and the Future of Media and Measurement in Canada
Catalyst: Driving Change. Defining Tomorrow. marked the first co‑hosted event between Numeris, NLogic, and the Association of Canadian Advertisers (ACA), bringing together close to 200 leaders from across the Canadian advertising, media, and measurement industry. The day also served as an important moment for Numeris and NLogic, with the announcement that the two organizations will move forward as a single brand—Numeris—in the fall, reflecting a shared commitment to greater alignment across data, products, and solutions. Against that backdrop, the event set out to explore how collaboration, innovation, and trusted foundations can help the industry navigate an increasingly complex measurement landscape.
Across panels and presentations, a consistent theme emerged: progress will not come from any single tool or organization, but from collaboration, shared foundations, and a willingness to evolve measurement systems so they reflect how Canadians actually consume media and how business decisions are made today.
A Shared Foundation: The Future of Measurement in Canada
The day opened with a strong signal of intent through the Measurement Panel, which brought together leaders from Numeris, COMMB, Vividata, Environics Analytics, and Comscore. Seeing these organizations—each with a distinct mandate—on the same stage reinforced the idea that advancing measurement in Canada requires alignment across the ecosystem.
From COMMB’s perspective, Lindsey Talbot emphasized the responsibility the industry has to invest in Canadian data and infrastructure:
“As an industry, we have a responsibility to lean into Canadian measurement and Canadian data.”
That responsibility, panelists agreed, extends beyond methodology. It includes shared governance, reduced duplication, and systems that can support planning, evaluation, and modeling consistently over time.
From Numeris, Alicia Olson‑Keating reinforced that alignment cannot be driven by any one organization alone:
“No one is going to get there on their own. This truly has to be a partnership.”
She added that the work underway is grounded in collective input: “This is not a Numeris initiative. It’s joint industry input into how it comes together.”
The discussion also highlighted the practical realities of Canadian measurement. Jan Kestle of Environics Analytics spoke to the importance of being deliberate as the industry evolves, noting the need for “hubs, centralization, and breaking down fragmentation” while being clear about how those systems are structured and sustained.
Video Measurement: Clarity Across Screens
A focal point of the day was progress in cross‑platform video measurement, highlighted through updates on National Video Audience Measurement (VAM). Numeris announced that YouTube and Snapchat have joined National VAM, alongside Prime Video’s inaugural subscription last fall—an important step toward more complete and comparable video measurement in Canada.
Digital and broadcast leaders discussed how independent, third‑party measurement enables clearer planning and evaluation across an increasingly complex video landscape. As one platform leader noted, participation in standardized measurement helps brands and agencies evaluate video agnostic of channel and better understand how different platforms work together within a media mix.
Complementing this discussion, a session on The Canadian Video Consumer used VAM alongside Echo Intelligence to demonstrate how audiences move fluidly across linear TV, streaming, social, and mobile environments. A key takeaway showed that 36% of Canadian adults subscribe to two or more ad‑supported streaming services, and that these multi‑platform viewers tend to skew younger, are active on platforms like Snapchat, and express greater openness to AI‑generated recommendations—illustrating the value of connecting viewing behaviour with consumer attributes.
Retail Media: Connecting Storytelling to Sales
The Retail Media panel brought a commerce‑focused perspective to the day, exploring how closed‑loop measurement, incrementality, and first‑party data are reshaping expectations for accountability and performance.
Retail leaders consistently highlighted Canada’s position as a market that enables rapid learning and refinement. As Meaghan Brophy, Head of Sales of Walmart Connect, noted, “Canada is a really impactful test and learn ecosystem,” pointing to the country’s combination of scale, retailer concentration, and strong data assets as key enablers of innovation.
From a measurement standpoint, the panel emphasized the growing importance of linking media exposure to real business outcomes. Ryan Webber, VP of Sales & Client Success at Loblaw Advance, spoke directly to this shift, saying, “We can actually have closed‑loop reporting, closed‑loop measurement and prove through business impact, business growth, and unit sales.” Together, panelists reinforced that retail media is evolving beyond a purely lower‑funnel discipline, creating new opportunities to connect brand storytelling with transaction‑level results across digital and physical environments.
Audio strategy: evolving measurement with stability and scale
The day also included a look at Numeris’ Audio Strategy, outlining how audio measurement is evolving to better reflect listener behaviour while addressing long‑standing challenges around stability, fragmentation, and scale—particularly in local markets.
The strategy—built around a phased approach toward hybrid measurement, greater consistency across markets, and ultimately national and provincial reach—was then pressure‑tested through a fireside conversation with Sarah Thompson from Glassroom and Gerry MacKrell from CBS . From an agency perspective, Sarah highlighted how increased granularity creates planning opportunity, explaining that “this gives us visibility into the thing that is unseen,” particularly in smaller markets where brands can compete more effectively. She also reinforced audio’s proven effectiveness, noting, “Radio does work. I’ve seen it work. I’ve seen many MMMs that report on how it works—but it is undervalued at the table against other media.”
Gerry echoed that renewed investment in audio measurement is critical, saying he was “thrilled and delighted to see a reinvestment in audio measurement and doing an exercise in gap filling,” while cautioning that visibility within modern planning systems is essential: “If you’re not able to plug into the planning and execution systems of tomorrow, you’re invisible.” Together, the discussion reinforced that evolving audio measurement is not just a technical exercise, but a necessary step to ensure the channel remains visible, valued, and competitive within a cross‑media planning environment.
Synthetic Data: Expanding Insight while Protecting Trust
This session explored how modeled populations can help address some of the more common challenges in measurement—without replacing observed data. The discussion focused on scale, privacy, and the ability to connect fragmented datasets in ways that would not otherwise be possible.
Winston Li from Arima framed synthetic data clearly as an augmentation, not a substitute: “Synthetic data is not here to replace real data. It is to augment real data, and it is being trained from real data.” He emphasized its ability to mirror real‑world statistical patterns while significantly reducing privacy and re‑identification risk—an increasingly important consideration as datasets grow richer and more interconnected.
From Numeris’ perspective, they reinforced that synthetic approaches only create value when anchored in trusted foundations. It was noted that respondent‑based data remains “the foundation of trusted audience data,” while synthetic populations, when built responsibly, can improve coverage, reduce volatility, and provide greater granularity—particularly for long‑tail or niche behaviours that are difficult to measure at scale. The session underscored that the future of measurement lies in hybrid approaches, combining the strengths of observed data with advanced modeling to support innovation without compromising transparency or accountability.
MMM: Turning Data into Decisions the
C-suite Understands
Chris Williams closed the day with The MMM Game, exploring how marketing mix modeling is evolving into a practical decision‑making tool for brands navigating economic pressure and complex media environments. Panelists from Miix Analytics, Google, and WPP emphasized that MMM’s value lies in bringing all business drivers into a single, outcome‑focused view.
Hilary Borndahl, Founder and CEO of Miix Analytics, described MMM as a way to cut through complexity, explaining that “marketing mix modeling is the technique that takes all of the impacts that can be driving conversion and puts it in one model,” helping brands understand what is truly incremental versus base performance. That focus on incrementality was echoed by Sudhir Gupta, Group Director of Tech & Solutions at WPP Media, who reinforced that “the most important thing is not just the ROI you’re seeing—it’s the incremental ROI.” highlighting that real value comes from isolating what marketing drives and using that to inform budget allocation, not just performance reporting.
Looking ahead, Fahmid Ahmed, Measurement Lead for MMM & X‑Media at Google, highlighted how modern MMM outputs—such as response curves and forecasts—support more confident planning, enabling marketers to see “what would happen if you increased or reduced spend.” Together, panelists agreed that when implemented well, MMM creates a shared language between marketing and finance, shifting conversations from cost efficiency to business growth.
Across every session, Catalyst reinforced that the future of measurement in Canada depends on alignment, collaboration, and shared intent. Whether discussing video, audio, retail media, or modeling, speakers consistently pointed toward the same conclusion: modern tools only create value when they are grounded in trusted foundations and designed to work together.
By bringing diverse voices onto the same stage—and into the same conversation—the event highlighted both the complexity of the challenge and the momentum already underway. Catalyst: Driving Change. Defining Tomorrow. offered a clear reminder that progress is not about choosing sides or systems, but about building measurement frameworks the entire ecosystem can stand behind as the industry moves forward.