At Possible 2026, ABCS Insights CEO Jerome Shimizu introduced what the industry has been building toward for four decades: the fifth era of ROAS. We call this the Connected Outcomes Era, and it’s more than an evolution of ROAS; it’s a game-changing disruption.
Brand signals, sales outcomes, and media performance across every channel are now measurable in one place, from one source. ABCS Insights is making that possible by converging brand, consideration, and sales metrics around the same consumer and the same view of the funnel.
This is the first era to answer the question asked by every CMO, brand manager, and media planner:
What is actually driving my incremental sales?
Through 40 years – and four distinct eras of ROAS – our industry got close. We made educated guesses. Triangulated. Correlated.
But establishing direct causality across every channel, every signal, every funnel stage in one place?
Nobody was able to do that, until…
…We had a vision at ABCS Insight. We saw a way to change the status quo.
The Evolution of ROAS
Every era of measurement is born from disruption. The upheaval that changed the trajectory of our industry forever was Walmart pulling its store data from the marketplace in 2001. This effectively ended the Store Era and our reliance on scanner data to calculate ROAS.
The industry was forced to innovate. In the Household Era, we learned how to create look-alike audiences built from tens of thousands of households. When we needed greater scale, we developed frequent-shopper and loyalty-card datasets. That took us into the Shopper Era.
Then, another seismic disruption. Retailers once more pulled back their data. Innovative thinking led to building panels from tens of millions of households. The Outcomes Era began.
At ABCS, we started looking beyond this era immediately. We saw right away: it had an early expiration date.
How We’re Disrupting the Future of ROAS
Two forces are currently reshaping measurement – fast.
The first is the decreasing usefulness of legacy data. Frequent shopper datasets are shrinking. Many types of purchases – cash, convenience store, online – aren’t included. And a complete view of the shopping journey? Missing.
The second force is the transformation of the identity connective layer. Onboarding, ID resolution, and data rails are moving into fewer and non-neutral hands – and at a time when neutral, independent measurement has never mattered more.
Right now – in spite of these pressures – the industry badly needs answers to some very specific questions about what’s driving incremental sales:
- Are my brand and promotions synced to maximize incremental ROAS?
- Where is my single source of truth for cross-channel campaign measurement?
- How can I prove that my upper-funnel investment drove incremental sales?
- Where does my best growth opportunity actually live?
These four questions have sat unanswered – or only partially answered – across four eras of ROAS.
ABCS has been steadily building toward answering them. In the Outcomes Era, we shifted our focus to measuring the relationships between outcomes.
What’s different now – what’s making it all possible – is our one-of-a-kind, all-inclusive, connected system. ABCS now has an all-item, all-outlet view of real household purchasing — measured at a scale, depth, and diversity that no single panel can match.
We’ve discovered that combining omni-channel commerce data with native identity in a single system allows marketers to finally answer what was previously unanswerable. With a 100% match, the signals are stronger and more actionable.
This new connective tissue between the upper and lower funnel means that, for the first time, brand and sales can be measured and brought together across every channel, retailer, and vertical. And the size of the brand? Doesn’t matter. We can measure ROAS for small brands just as easily as large ones.
Every data point lives in the same source – the ABCS data network – so we can draw a direct line between consumer motivation and action. No more guesswork. No more looking at multiple surveys or transaction datasets and making a leap of faith.
That’s how we’re disrupting measurement. It’s how the Connected Outcomes Era comes into being.
At last, marketers can see what they couldn’t before. Brand signals, sales outcomes, and media performance across every channel, including the walled gardens, are finally dimensions of the same answer.
Measurement is more accurate and complete. Marketers can activate and optimize a campaign in flight more efficiently. They can get to market faster, especially with custom, bespoke audiences.
By creating this uniquely singular ecosystem, we’re giving marketers the clarity they need to drive results they once only dreamed about. With full-funnel visibility, the Connected Outcomes Era will forever change how you think about your KPIs and the campaigns that help you reach your goals.
Welcome to the Connected Outcomes Era
Check out Jerome’s full POSSIBLE 2026 session, The Past, Present, and Future of ROAS.
Ready to explore what Connected Outcomes measurement could mean for your brand?