CES panel recap: The future of marketing measurement takes flight with Alembic and Delta Air Lines
Alembic Technologies took center stage at the recent Brand Innovators Marketing Leadership Summit at CES in Las Vegas, where our founder and CEO joined an executive panel to discuss the exciting future of marketing measurement. The session, “Marketing on the Exponential,” took place on January 8, 2025, and was moderated by Paul Suchman, Chief Marketing Officer at Audacy. Panelists included:
- Alicia Tillman, Chief Marketing Officer, Delta Air Lines
- Tomás Puig, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Alembic
- Jeffrey Katzenberg, Founding Partner, WndrCo
These industry leaders shared the stage, discussing how AI-driven insights are redefining marketing measurement. Each offered a perspective on the collaboration between our team and Delta, examining our recent pilot program that brought precision measurement and accountability to Delta’s brand marketing strategies. The full 30-minute session is available on YouTube, with a summary and key takeaways below.
The challenge of marketing attribution and measurement
Proving the revenue impact of marketing has long been a pain point for CMOs. It’s often seen as a “black box.” Puig opened the panel by emphasizing how traditional approaches fail to capture the causal relationships between the marketing events that drive ROI. This was the key inspiration for developing our Marketing Intelligence Platform, which enables CMOs to quantify brand impact in real time.
Most legacy attribution models often rely on outdated techniques, and real-time marketing measurement has remained elusive for above-the-line (ATL) mass media tactics, such as TV, radio and podcast advertising. Even with the advancements in digital media, most marketers still lack the tools to optimize across brand and performance marketing. At Alembic, we fill these gaps by delivering actionable insights fueled by the transformative power of causal AI. Our platform delivers in-depth insights across channels, as demonstrated in Delta’s Paris 2024 Olympics campaign pilot.
Delta’s collaboration with Alembic
The pilot partnership between Alembic and Delta Air Lines aimed to address one of the most persistent challenges in marketing: proving ROI. According to Tillman, Delta worked with Alembic to measure the effectiveness of its Olympic sponsorship. A priority of this collaboration was to quantify the impact of brand activations and high-profile event sponsorships.
Delta used our platform to track customer engagement during Olympic broadcasts, with AI-driven insights linking marketing touchpoints to direct revenue outcomes. The engagement revealed a genuine causal relationship between brand placements and ticket sales.
Puig explained that our mission is to transform marketers back into storytellers again.
Alembic does the heavy lifting to show how powerful narratives drive marketing performance. It does this by identifying the revenue-driving activities across channels. Alembic’s platform, powered by a supercomputer, ingests first- and third-party data from diverse sources like TV, social media and in-store traffic. This allows brands to:
- Compare metrics from disparate channels in a unified framework
- Measure long-term brand equity alongside short-term performance metrics
- Optimize campaigns in-flight using real-time feedback
- Provide CFOs with transparent, financial-grade reporting
With Alembic in place, our reporting allowed Delta to demonstrate marketing value internally to its executive team and optimize above-the-line spending.
Panelist takeaways: Actionable insights for CMOs
In closing, the panelists shared actionable takeaways for CMOs seeking to transform their marketing strategies, which were to:
- Embrace AI-driven attribution: AI provides the granularity required to measure brand campaigns. Predictive insights help allocate budgets with precision.
- Build cross-functional relationships: Collaboration between marketing and finance ensures alignment on business goals. Shared access to insights fosters transparency and trust.
- Use pilot programs to validate new tools: Delta’s proof of concept with Alembic demonstrated our platform’s effectiveness in a controlled environment. Pilot programs allow organizations to identify quick wins and scale solutions with confidence.
- Move beyond legacy tools: Our platform works alongside existing MTA and MMM systems, so brands can leverage new methodologies without abandoning established practices.
- Focus on actionable intelligence: Our AI-powered Intelligence Brief interprets data and provides actionable insights that enable mid-campaign adjustments for better ROI.
The successful collaboration between Delta and Alembic exemplifies the future of marketing measurement. By combining AI with real-time analytics, brands can move beyond guesswork to demonstrate ROI. This was reinforced by panelists who collectively sent a powerful message: marketing is not a cost center — it’s a strategic business enabler. Watch the full session on YouTube.
See how Alembic can transform your brand’s marketing measurement
Alembic is an AI-powered Marketing Intelligence Platform designed to empower CMOs with the data they need to optimize campaigns, drive revenue and align marketing results with organizational goals. Fueled by the desire to resolve the most common pain points of marketing leaders, Alembic is focused on the future of brand marketing measurement. Alembic was also recently recognized in the Transformative Product category in the 2025 BIG Innovation Awards for groundbreaking work with AI.
If your company is interested in setting up a pilot program, book a demo today to see the Alembic platform in action. Ready to get started?
