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Why frameworks dominated our conference
Jeff Sauer
October 13, 2025
In partnership with
Strategy won at Measure Summit
I just spent three days listening to 42 presentations about measurement and marketing.
Here's what surprised me: Only around half of the presentations were tactical.
The other half? Pure strategy and frameworks.
Eric Boissonneault had a framework. Julius had one. Siavash Kanani presented his. Steen Rasmussen built one out. Almost every speaker brought some kind of strategic structure.
This caught me off guard but also made me proud. You'd expect a measurement conference to be all buttons and clicks and "here's where to find that API."
Instead, we got big picture thinking.
Why Strategy Emerged
The pattern became clear after the first day. Speaker after speaker said some variation of: "The technology doesn't matter if you can't get buy-in."
"Doesn't matter if clients won't pay attention."
"Useless if people won't accept your recommendations."
That's the real challenge. Not finding the data. Getting people to act on it.
You can have the most sophisticated tracking setup in the world. Perfect attribution. Clean data flows. Advanced modeling.
If your stakeholders don't trust it or understand it or care about it, you've built nothing useful.
The Strategy-First Trap
But here's where it gets interesting. Most consultants approach this backwards.
They think: Strategy first, then choose tactics.
Build the framework, then pick the tools.
That's not how it actually works in the real world.
In my agency days, we had a saying: "We develop strategies from what's possible (the tactics)."
You have to know what's tactically available before you can create realistic strategies in the real world. You can't promise insights you can't actually deliver.
The Full Circle
What I saw at Measure Summit was the industry coming full circle on this realization.
The speakers who really connected weren't just showing tactical implementations. They weren't just presenting abstract frameworks either.
They were showing how tactical capabilities inform strategic thinking.
How understanding what's possible with server-side tracking changes your measurement strategy.
How knowing the limitations of iOS attribution affects your media planning framework.
How GA4's data model shapes your reporting approach.
Why This Balance Matters
Technology changes constantly. Privacy regulations shift. Platforms update their APIs. Third-party cookies disappear.
If your strategy is built on tactics that become obsolete, your strategy becomes obsolete.
But if you only focus on tactics without strategic context, you're just a button-clicker. Anyone can learn where to click by a simple AI-powered search.
The value is in connecting what's technically possible to what's strategically important.
The MeasureU Philosophy
This is exactly why MeasureU exists.
Not to teach you where buttons are. You can Google that.
To help you think strategically about measurement while staying grounded in tactical reality.
To understand not just how to implement tracking, but why you'd implement it that way.
To know not just what the data says, but how to get people to act on what it says.
What This Means Going Forward
I think we're seeing the maturation of our industry.
Five years ago, it was enough to know Google Analytics better than your client. Set up some goals, create some dashboards, call it measurement.
That's not enough anymore.
Your clients have access to the same tools you do. They can watch the same YouTube tutorials. They can ask ChatGPT how to set up conversion tracking.
Your value isn't in knowing where buttons are. It's in knowing which buttons matter and why.
The Conference Validation
Watching 18 hours of presentations confirmed something I've believed for a while: The future belongs to people who can bridge strategy and tactics.
Who can take complex technical capabilities and translate them into business value.
Who can look at what's possible and determine what's profitable.
Who can build frameworks that work in the real world, not just in theory.
Moving Forward
This balance between strategy and tactics isn't going away. If anything, it's becoming more important.
As AI handles more of the tactical execution, human value shifts to strategic thinking. But that strategic thinking has to be grounded in technical reality.
You can't separate them anymore.
The people who understand this will thrive. The ones who don't will get replaced by AI tools that can click buttons faster than they can.
Thanks to everyone who presented at MeasureSummit. You reminded me why I love this industry and where it's headed.
To Your Measured Success!
--Jeff Sauer
Co-Founder of MeasureU
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