“[Meta] has tried to create a product that gives the appearance of a higher ROAS and abstracts away from where that ROAS is coming from,” Lisovetsky said, noting that many of the clients that have sought third-party measurement have also decreased their investment in Advantage+ campaigns.

A cautious mindset

Brands are also adopting third-party solutions because the cost of ads is more expensive, meaning companies want to be sure that they’re only spending on media that works.

Lisovetsky said the cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) on Meta has risen by 100% year-over-year for some accounts, spurring clients to use third-party measurement solutions to invest in cheaper channels like TikTok.

With third-party measurement tools, Markacy clients cut channels where they were paying to reach existing customers rather than finding new ones. Those include retargeting campaigns on Facebook and display, as well as branded search campaigns on Google (bidding on a brand’s own name), said Rigas. People searching for a brand are probably already existing customers.

Beyond high ad prices, economic headwinds facing DTC businesses are pushing brands to adopt more measurement tools, said Tucker Matheson, co-CEO of Markacy.

“Brands are trying to rationalize costs. There have been a lot of layoffs,” he said. “They need to be really smart [about] where to cut.”

Caution doesn’t just apply to wallets: Brands want to avoid having to rework their media strategy on the fly as cookie deprecation looms, Constantine said.

“No one wants to have another iOS 14,” she added.

Still no perfect solution

Third-party measurement tools can give brands a clearer picture of how their media is performing, but for digitally native brands that have spent years building up first-party data, the job can be done without outside help.

“You have to triangulate,” said Ankur Goyal, vp of growth at DTC diaper brand Coterie. “The goal is not to be a scientist and find the exact contribution of each channel. Then the ends become the means. The goal is to have an analytic framework that is easy enough to make decisions for me.”

Goyal has looked for a third-party solution to provide this analytic framework. So far, the more cost-effective solution is looking at upper-funnel data like post-purchase surveys, mid-funnel data from the platforms and lower-funnel data that includes last-click attribution. If all three metrics show that a channel is underperforming, it probably is, Goyal said.

And while Markacy clients have been increasingly using third-party measurement solutions, they don’t get granular data from Meta and other walled gardens, making the inferences they draw useful for only some DTC clients.

“There is not a perfect solution,” Rigas said. “What we have most success with is working with brands in really data-driven ways with all the different signals. It’s hard to say there is a panacea.”