Are We Measuring What Matters? A New Look at KPIs in 2025

Episode 4. KPIs — do we still care?

 

Neha: How do we define a successful campaign in 2025? What are the new metrics to pay attention to? And, finally, should we really care about KPIs that much?

Our speakers:
Madeleine Chill Gabay, Content Lead at Yango Ads
Sebastian Loaiza, Senior Growth Manager at Yango Ads

Our host: Neha Dawar, Business Development Manager at Yango Ads

TRAILER

Madeleine: What KPIs are considered really important has changed a lot, especially in the past few years.

Sebastian: Conversion rate, CPAs, ROAs, targets and averages, etc.

Neha: Are we actually measuring what really matters or what's just easy to measure?

Madeleine: I can't stand followers on social media. It's so quantity over quality. It drives me nuts.

Sebastian: It's not really telling you much. You see the impressions counting, but what is it? It can be quite misleading.

Madeleine: Sometimes having more isn't always better.

EPISODE

Neha: I can't wait till my boss hears this episode. Hello, everyone. My name is Neha and this is Points of Growth by Yango Ads. In the podcast, we gather ad tech experts who share their challenges and insights on advertising, monetization and all things digital. And also we finally get to make sense of it all.

This is a very serious industry and I think it's really important for us to get together and discuss it once in a while. Today we're going to explore a hot topic for both marketing and business sides. Performance, metrics, KPIs, effectiveness, all these words that we hear every single workday and I honestly hope only during our workdays. But the industry is changing rapidly and so are the notions of effectiveness.

How do we distinguish a successful campaign in 2025? What are the new metrics to pay attention to? And finally, why should we really care about KPIs that much? I personally cannot wait to dive into this discussion. Our guests today are Madeline Chill Gabay, Content Lead at Yango Ads. Hello, hello! And Sebastian Loaiza, Senior Growth Manager at Yango Ads.

Sebastian: Hey, thanks for having me.

Neha: Okay. First things first, our favorite question of all time. What is it exactly that you do?

Madeleine: So I'm a content lead, and this means that I run content marketing for Yango Ads Space. In our company, content marketing, marketing in general, is very closely aligned with sales. So it's also a little bit of a sales enablement role. It's not a 100% traditional content marketing role, but basically a lot of writing and some strategy. That sounds like fun.

Neha: It is, it is. Sebastian, fire away.

Sebastian: From my side, as a Senior Growth Manager for Yango Ads Space, I'm basically focused on identifying growth opportunities we might have. This could be in various areas — we're looking at sales processes, pitch materials — so there's a lot of collaboration with Madeleine, as well as with relationship management and performance.

This can relate to the product itself, performance-wise, or to performance marketing in general. There's also a lot of collaboration with clients and agencies to support their performance marketing efforts. Obviously, if they do well, we do well.

Just to give you a bit more context about Yango Ads Space — in a nutshell, to make it clearer — it's basically an ad tech platform. Or in simpler terms, a performance marketing channel for advertisers and agencies to use.

It supports dynamic, static, and adaptive banners to deliver risk-free performance ads — essentially, you pay only based on results. There are also campaigns designed to drive higher-quality, more engaged sessions.

Neha: Okay, so we've got a bit of fun and a bit of seriousness going on here

Madeleine: Yeah, that's exactly me and Seb's job and the way we interact too, I would say.

Neha: So, we're about to explore the changing landscape of performance, and both of you have experience in performance marketing — past or present. So let's start with the basics: how do you define a KPI in 2025, and has that definition evolved in your work?

Sebastian: I mean, for me, simply put, a KPI is a goal — a target set in place. And this could be specific objectives or deliverables. It could be revenue, conversions, and other metrics. And within the metrics sphere, you know, it could be numerous things — it could be conversion rate goals or improvements, CPAs, ROAS, targets, averages, etc. Yeah, I would say that again.

Madeleine: I did used to work more on the performance side of marketing. Now I work in a less directly performance-focused role. It's a mixture of performance and brand in my job. I agree with what Seb said on the content side of things. I think which KPIs are considered really important has changed a lot, especially in the past few years. I think it used to be a lot more about quantity, and now, on the content side of things, it's a lot more about quality — at least in our company.

Also, non-business-related KPIs — kind of like what we might call vanity metrics — are still tracked, but they carry a lot less weight than the business KPIs nowadays. So, like leads generated, deals closed, etc. And I know maybe it sounds odd that content would be tracked by those metrics, but we try to do it as much as possible. I think it's shifted the focus from quantity to quality a lot more.

Neha: I like that! I was about to ask you, like, how do you track KPIs when it comes to content? But you cleared that up.

Sebastian: It can also be just objective-wise, right? It depends on the company itself and what they have. It could be the number of articles being released, or pages, or things that are being published. So it could be objective.

Neha: Let's discuss the reasons why effectiveness is changing today. You know, we're working in the age of privacy changes, AI-driven automation, and all these different buzzwords that are constantly thrown at us. How does it affect our jobs and our metrics? Like, are we actually measuring what really matters — or just what's easy to measure?

Madeleine: I think sometimes we definitely are measuring what's easy to measure in today's marketing world. But I also think that, since attribution has gotten more difficult in the last few years — with privacy laws changing and cookies changing, etc. — you sometimes, again, this is coming from a content perspective, have to continue marketing activities that you know from experience work, even if you don't have a 100% clear way to attribute or demonstrate results.

And you know, you have to be careful with this because you don't want to just throw work and money at the wall. But there is a certain amount of that. At the same time, I think that's more on the brand marketing side of things. On the performance side, I think the industry is moving more towards measuring things that actually matter. Obviously, there have been some bumps in the road, but I think it's actually getting better.

Seb mentioned earlier like ROAS, CPA, CPI, AOV, LTV — these are super business-relevant metrics that more and more ad tech companies are offering, ourselves included. And I think more and more marketers are using them. I think they're really useful metrics.

So it kind of depends on what side of marketing you're on. Maybe you'll disagree, Seb, but that's my take.

Sebastian: I agree with the idea of starting in a place that's comfortable and then evolving from there. But yeah, obviously, this question brings up so many things to consider — we're talking about privacy laws, AI, and whether it's all still effective. And there's a bit of a catch-22 all around in this area.

If I were to break it down on the privacy side, I'd say it's definitely pushing us to become more effective. We're being forced to find better, more efficient ways to collect data — first-party data and so on.

This could, of course, change entirely with Google's recent announcement that they're scrapping their efforts toward a cookieless world. So in that regard, yes, we do need to become more effective in how we collect data. And by becoming more effective, we can also become more personalized, which can increase conversion rates, retention, and so on. Yes, it might reduce the number of users we reach and target, but again, it will be more personalized — and therefore, more effective.

On the AI front, we can definitely become more efficient, especially on the content side — it helps us generate more content in bulk, or at least come up with more ideas. But this is where the catch-22 comes in for me. Yes, it helps with research, content creation, and supports marketing, research, and business teams in delivering more. But at the same time, it could potentially dull our skills — like a calculator does.

There was a time when everyone was good at mental math, doing things most people now can't. Personally, I rely on calculators — do I always get the right numbers? Yeah, sure — but it's not quite the same.

So when it comes to what's going to be an effective measurement in this context, it really depends on the individual, the company, and the stakeholders — what they're measuring and what they value more: quality or quantity. Did they produce enough articles, creatives, or campaigns? Or are the campaigns delivering fewer users but with higher retention, better lifetime value, stronger SEO, or greater PR impact? It all comes down to their specific strategy — and aligning with that.

Neha: Okay, so we talked about effectiveness on one end of the spectrum — now let's go to the other side. What are some of the outdated KPIs or vanity metrics that people are still clinging to, and why might they be misleading? Only hard truths here. Controversial opinions — fire away. We keep coming back to quantity versus quality.

Madeleine: Again, I'm going to talk about content, but I think most quantity-related metrics when it comes to content are almost completely obsolete since generative AI became so powerful. Producing a lot of content isn't worth nearly as much as it used to be. Even in previous roles I had, our content KPIs were very quantity-based, but so much has changed. Organic search is a prime example of this — the internet is totally flooded with AI-generated blog content and all kinds of content. Search engines have been completely changing how they rank content to try to weed out the more generic, probably AI-produced material, and bring higher-quality, original-thinking content to the top.

So, I mean, I guess I shouldn't say it's completely obsolete — you do need a certain amount of volume — but I think producing really interesting content, original research, and valuable information is much more important than it used to be. I'm lucky that I have marketing leadership that agrees with this, so I can dedicate time to doing original research reports that are actually unique. But I think this is a big challenge, because not all businesses have caught up to this concept, and marketing teams are probably struggling with it.

Sebastian: On my side, looking at more day-to-day performance metrics you see in reports, I'd say impressions, clicks, and potentially installs are a bit outdated — at least in my personal opinion. Impressions alone don't say much to me. You know, there's already an abundance of banners out there. People scroll quickly through websites and social media, so in general, these banners can be overlooked or ignored, which means impressions don't really tell you much. You see the numbers counting up, but what does it actually mean?

Clicks are kind of the same — they can be quite misleading. There are a lot of intrusive ads, like interstitials, that are large and disruptive. Users often try to close the banner but accidentally click through. So again, it's misleading. There are also a lot of bots and fraudulent clicks — it's huge. A significant percentage of your marketing budget can go into fraud clicks or other types of fraud.

As for installs, that can be misleading too. It can lead to fraud because there are many incentivized publishers trying to get paid installs. So that again results in a lot of low-quality conversions, so to speak. It might look like installs are going up, but what's the value of those installs? That might still be someone's KPI.

So yeah, I'm not a big fan of these three metrics. I don't think people should rely too much on them. But they can still be useful as red flags — like, if you see a sudden spike in impressions or clicks, it's worth digging into to see what's really going on.

Madeleine: I want to add one thing to that, Seb. I think that's a really good point — what you said about installs. I can't name names, but I know that some of the big game engine companies are now optimizing not for installs, but for the first action after install, because installs alone can be so misleading, like you said. Unfortunately, there's just so much fraud. So yeah, great point.

Sebastian: Yeah, I always recommend going further deep into, like, if it's app marketing, go further deep into the app ecosystem or the app metrics — so it should be an in-app event.

Neha: Coming back to what Madeline said about quality over quantity — because here at Yango, I'm the Business Development Manager for Thailand — I kind of need to keep up a lot with what the tourism industry is doing, and I need to know what my government's up to. And basically, at this point, for them it's a vanity metric, but their target was nearly 40 million tourists to come into Thailand. And, you know, we are a tourism-driven country.

Now the question is, are these the kind of quality tourists you want to be bringing in? I'm not going to get into it — it's all over the news — but there are people, you know, who just kind of mess around and stuff, and then cause havoc and all these different things. And you see people complaining on all these different platforms that the government should be focusing on quality tourists, not quantity. Those are the ones who are going to be spending a bit more money in the economy — they spend more per trip, bringing more into the economy, versus those people who just kind of come in for a short stay or whatever.

But yeah, that's just my two cents here.

Sebastian, you did mention, you know, some things that you would be focusing on — and that kind of relates to my next question: are there any emerging or underrated KPIs that marketers should start tracking more closely?

Madeleine: It's a great question! And I actually have such a controversial take here that even I myself would've thought was complete nonsense like a year ago — so maybe I'll change my mind again. But no, I actually think that when it comes to email marketing, open rate is totally underrated.

I think it's gotten a bad rap in the last couple of years. And yeah, it's not the be-all and end-all — it's not going to predict your business's future — but I think it can be really indicative of how much your audience cares about or is interested in your brand, network, or whatever. Do they care about your feature releases? Do they care about your webinars? If you're a retail product, do they care about your summer sale? I don't know.

Now, obviously, subject lines and all kinds of other things also affect open rates. But I think when you look at them on more of a macro scale, they can actually tell you a lot about your brand health. Again, this is really controversial, so maybe I'm going to be booed offline at this rate.

Sebastian: I think it really is going to depend on the marketer, the company themselves, and even the channel, right? Because as Madeline mentioned, she's going into email marketing specifically — so then you, etc. And each one might have a different KPI you want to look into.

It might differ and change — not just the KPI or the value number itself, but even the metric. It could be ROAS, it could be CPA, it could be net revenue, it could be ARPU. So it's going to change a lot.

And my opinion is always to look more into the deeper metrics — kind of a bottom-up outlook. That's why I mentioned ARPU and lifetime value and ROAS and all of these. So from there, you'd look bottom-up and kind of see what's going on. You know, like, if the number looks weird, then you start going backward into the funnel itself and try to understand — maybe this is not the right geo, maybe this is not the right targeted user segment, and so on and so forth.

But yeah — bottom-up would be, I guess, my response.

Neha: So, email open rate. What I've noticed with my own behavior over time is that there's this initial excitement when I get into a new interest—like Korean skincare. I've been totally obsessing over it. So, I subscribe to all these different websites, and they start sending me all these offers and product updates. At first, I'm like, "Oh yeah, what's this new product?"

But after a while, I'm just going through my email and seeing a bunch of messages, and I'm like, "Okay, click, click, click, mark as read." I just toss them. I'm like, "Nope, not interested anymore." Email fatigue. Yeah, it just becomes too much. And eventually, I'm like, "Okay, this is getting way too overwhelming—I'm going to unsubscribe now."

Madeleine: That's a good point — it's a balance. That also speaks to the idea that you shouldn't flood your audience. By the way, I've had the same experience — not with Korean skincare, but with all kinds of other things I'm obsessed with, even marketing newsletters. I get so excited about them at first, but then if they start spamming me, I'm like, "Bro... cut it back a little." So yeah, you're right — it's a balance. It's a dance.

Sebastian: Funny enough, I think it's all about A/B testing. I've done email marketing across different global regions, and in some specific regions, performance was actually better when emails were sent daily — even more than once per day.

Madeleine: Really?

Sebastian: Oh my God! Yeah, performance was way better.

Neha: You're getting banished from my email.

Madeleine: Seb, you're kicked out! Just kidding!

Sebastian: But A/B test, you got to test these things and see what works.

Madeleine: Yeah, interesting. I sort of didn't assume there would be a geographical difference on that one.

Neha: Okay, speaking of spamming emails every day — and since we're also talking about short-term performance — I'm wondering: how do we balance short-term performance, like ROAS, which you mentioned, Seb, with long-term growth?

Madeleine: If you're working at a big company or a big brand, it becomes easier because you have a performance or growth team focused on the performance metrics, and then you have a brand or corporate marketing team focusing on brand metrics. But in any case, striking this balance is a challenge. It's either a challenge for the CMO or, in smaller teams, for everyone.

When money is tight and the market is unstable — which, to be honest, it kind of always is these days — I think businesses tend to lean heavily on short-term performance, and that's understandable. A certain reliance on performance is good. But I think a really strong marketing leader understands the business value of brand and will always prioritize it, too.

I mean, there are so many brands I can think of where I don't actually know much about their performance marketing efforts, but their brand is so powerful and recognizable in ways that aren't even 100% attributable or measurable. Even that company we mentioned earlier that went AI-first — whose name shall not be mentioned — so much of their marketing is brand-forward.

It can definitely be tempting, especially when times are tough, to over-rely on performance. But ultimately, performance is fed by a strong brand presence. I guess I don't really have a clear answer — you just have to try to juggle it and hope that you have leadership, or that you are the leadership, that's able to keep an eye on the long view as well.

Seb, save me! Save me with an answer here.

Sebastian: I'm a big believer in a 360-degree marketing strategy, so I don't think you should rely on just one or the other. I understand why some companies might — like Madeline mentioned, due to budget constraints, for example, or maybe their marketing leader is more brand-focused, so they lean into that. But yeah, I think it's a big mistake to focus only on one. You need to mix it up.

The whole marketing ecosystem — not just branding and performance, but multiple different channels — should work together. Even if you're using repeat marketing channels that might seem similar, when you test them out, you'll see they complement each other. They add incrementality to one another. So having this ecosystem in place really brings the strategy forward and strengthens the entire push.

When it comes to finding balance, you have to try different mixes and test what works. I usually start with something like a 60/40 split — 60% going to performance, 40% to branding — and adjust from there. I divide the efforts, the budgets, and the targets accordingly. But that ratio can change. It's dynamic. It really depends on your brand, your budget, and your resources — not just financial, but also your team, technical capacity, tools, and so on.

So yeah, you've got to analyze all of that and move forward accordingly. But without a doubt, you need that 360-degree strategy.

Neha: Okay. Since we're on the topic of, you know, 360 degrees and the bigger picture, for me, there is this need to find the right balance to make sure we have a holistic view. And I do feel like some businesses, they have this KPI tunnel vision, that they're kind of chasing metrics and numbers at the expense of bigger business goals. And do you think, quote unquote, hitting the numbers always means success?

Madeleine: That's a good point! I like the term "KPI tunnel vision." I actually think that if you're working with the right KPIs, hitting the numbers pretty much does mean success.

Sure, there are some things that are intangibles — always going to be hard to track — like how well your brand slogan works. That might be a little hard to attribute to this or that. And I think businesses are getting better at this in general.

I think if your KPIs are aligned closely enough with your business goals, then it can be a pretty accurate process. I mean, like Seb has talked a lot about these metrics as well — net revenue, ROAS, CPA, etc.

Obviously, you have to take all your KPIs with a grain of salt. You have to watch out for ad fraud, and so on. But I think that if you are choosing the right KPIs, you can even go a little tunnel vision if you need to sometimes.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I think it's doable!

Neha: Seb, your controversial opinion?

Sebastian: No, I like the way Madeleine put it. See, I think the term KPI itself can be misleading. When you say KPI, you normally — at least in my opinion — tend to think of something performance-driven. But as we mentioned earlier, a KPI can represent a lot of different things.

And within that, if you choose the right KPIs, then KPI tunnel vision is actually fine — because within that selection, you're including all the right ones. You've got branding KPIs, performance KPIs, objectives, etc. So in that sense, it's okay.

But if we're referring to just one specific number — a single performance metric — then yes, I think that's limiting. Like I mentioned before, you need balance. You need both.

You can't always be optimizing performance numbers alone. If you want your brand to scale and be sustainable, you also need to look at branding trends — awareness, perception, engagement, and so on. Otherwise, your brand might stay small and may not survive for long.

Madeleine: Good point! Sustainability, good point!

Neha: I'm of the opinion that sometimes, with all these KPIs and the KPI tunnel vision we talk about — where you're constantly chasing metrics — it's not necessarily a bad thing. Oh boy, this is going to be controversial!

Madeleine: Hit it! Hit us with it!

Neha: Okay, let's talk from a business development perspective. I mean, we all have revenue targets that we kind of need to hit. And if I'm supposed to hit a KPI of bringing in, like, 10 advertisers — but each of these advertisers is only contributing, like, $10 each — that's not really contributing to the bigger business goal, right? Which is driving revenue and moving the business unit forward.

But if I, say, bring in two advertisers and they're bringing in $20,000 each, I think that's a lot more reasonable. I think that's a lot more effective — because, I mean, that's actually driving the business goals, right? Like, I need to report back saying, "Oh, look, these two advertisers brought in $40,000," versus, you know, "These 10 advertisers we were talking to only brought in $100."

That is my slightly controversial opinion.

Madeleine: No, I think that's a great point. I think that's a kind of very negative tunnel vision — sticking with some kind of arbitrary metric, like, for example, 10 clients or 10 deals or whatever.

And that's an example of a KPI that's kind of worthless, the way you're explaining it. Like, okay, well, if these 10 clients bring in almost nothing, it would be much better to have one high-paying client.

So that is a good point — it's like an addiction to vanity metrics.

Sebastian: I think this is where you need to strike a balance. Yes, I agree that the KPI of client acquisition can be quite low, but at the same time, you need to give the BD or sales representative more than just that one KPI. You need a revenue KPI alongside it — in conjunction, in collaboration — because the BD is going to spend a lot of time acquiring clients, and he or she won't always know the value of that client upfront, whether they're going to deposit 100 or 10. That's all part of the sales process.

So it's not really fair to give the BD only a revenue target, because it's not always possible for them to know from the beginning what a client will contribute. And if you want to maintain — again, it comes back to balance — motivation within the team, especially the BDs, then there needs to be a percentage split between both KPIs.

Yes, they should push for more clients, but at the same time, they also need revenue goals to work toward. It has to be balanced — it can't just be one or the other.

Neha: I can't wait until my boss hears this episode. I'll be like, "Hey, why didn't you listen to it?"

Okay, I have a fun question — and I'm curious. What's one KPI that you secretly hate but still have to use? This is the part where your boss is definitely going to be listening.

Madeleine: Mine's an easy one — I can't stand follower count on social media. It's all about quantity over quality, and it drives me nuts. I mean, you have to track it because... well, we're all kind of addicted to the metric. But especially now, your exposure depends on so much more than just who your followers are.

Most algorithms today show your content to people far beyond your follower base. And it's like what you were saying about, for example, the Ministry of Tourism in Thailand — who do you actually want to reach? Sometimes, more isn't better. You could have 1,000 followers who don't care much or engage with your business, or you could have 500 who are highly engaged and super relevant.

Sebastian: I agree with that one — that's a good one! Thanks, that's a very good one! I don't like it either.

I'd say, for the most part, I kind of hate social organic metrics. I was going to say engagement, but follower count, likes, all that stuff — I just don't like it.

You do need it, though. You need engagement to see what's working with your organic social posts, and of course, it sends some positive signals to search engines for SEO purposes. So there's definitely value there.

But man, is it time-consuming. I hate trying to keep up with it. I just want to hand it off to someone else and maybe support them with strategy. But wow... it's just so time-consuming

Neha: Okay, so that brings me to my last question for today: Do you think KPIs will always be necessary? Should we start rethinking how we're evaluating performance today?

Sebastian: I think for the time being, yeah — KPIs are definitely necessary. They give us structure and help us understand what to focus on — whether that's performance, branding, or something else. We need that structure to move forward within the company: to meet deliverables, hit targets, drive growth, and scale.

But when it comes to what type of KPIs we measure, that's definitely something we need to keep rethinking and evaluating. It's always evolving. New KPIs and new metrics come up from time to time, and they make us reconsider our approach.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution. A certain KPI might not make sense for your specific strategy, company, or vertical. But it's something we need to keep revisiting — evolving, improving, and adapting.

So yeah, I definitely think KPIs are here to stay — at least in the broader sense of what a KPI is.

Madeleine: For sure! I agree with Sebastian here. I think the over-reliance on vanity metrics — or vanity KPIs — is definitely decreasing. People are rethinking, and should be rethinking, which KPIs they're using, and not limiting themselves to the old-fashioned ones.

There are a lot of new ways to evaluate performance. But yeah — KPIs are definitely here to stay. Sorry if anyone was hoping we'd say, "No, the future is KPI-free."

The real question is which KPIs you're using. But you should absolutely be using some.

Neha: Yeah, I don't have a controversial opinion here either! I think they're going to be necessary.

Madeleine: Yeah!

Neha: Okay, well, that was amazing. Madeline, Sebastian — thank you so much for this incredible discussion.

You've already mentioned Space by Yango Ads, and that's something our listeners can explore. Just tap the link below to see how you can grow your e-commerce business with pay-per-result ads and full support from our team.

And speaking of KPIs — yes, you can absolutely track your campaign performance and watch those numbers grow in real time.

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