WPP Media’s Navin Khemka urges brands to tie media measurement to business outcomes

WPP Media’s Navin Khemka said Indian marketers should move beyond campaign outputs toward metrics such as lifetime value, loyalty and incremental sales. The group forecasts India’s advertising market will grow 8.8% to $22.5 billion in 2026.

— Source publishedWed, 26 Aug, 2026, 20:19 IST·First seen Thu, 27 Aug, 2026, 11:23 IST·Source ET Small Business

What happened

WPP Media’s Navin Khemka urged Indian brands to measure media through business outcomes such as lifetime value, loyalty and incremental sales. Its forecast

Key facts

  • 8.8%
  • 2026
  • $22.5 billion

Why this matters

Prioritize partnerships or acquisitions in attribution, customer-data and incrementality measurement capabilities that help brands connect media investment to revenue and retention.

What to watch

  • Major Indian advertisers shifting agency compensation from delivery metrics to sales, retention or profit-linked targets.
  • Growth in retailer media networks and data-clean-room partnerships that connect ad exposure to purchase behavior.
  • CFO involvement in marketing measurement governance and budget approvals.
  • Increased use of incrementality testing, marketing mix modeling and unified LTV reporting in earnings calls or annual reports.
  • Platform reporting changes, privacy restrictions or identity-policy shifts that make last-click attribution less credible.
  • Agency consolidation or specialist-acquisition activity centered on data, commerce media, experimentation and measurement capabilities.
  • Audit media KPIs against finance-owned outcomes: incremental gross profit, new-customer acquisition, repeat purchase and retention.
  • Create a test-and-learn budget with geo experiments, holdouts or matched-market tests to establish incrementality benchmarks.
  • Unify campaign exposure, CRM, ecommerce, retail-media and offline sales data under common customer and product taxonomies.
  • Renegotiate agency and platform reporting to include business-outcome targets, transparent methodology and shared accountability.
  • Prioritize channels with closed-loop measurement capabilities, while avoiding over-allocation to measurable but lower-incremental-value inventory.