"The CEO’s Guide to Marketing” recap: Most advanced marketing attribution model
Published: 10/14/2025
“What if you could finally prove your brand campaign drove $30M in sales — in real time?” For today’s marketers, there is no shortage of data. Platforms contain an array of clicks, impressions and engagement rates. Yet for most C-suite leaders, a fundamental question remains unanswered. What did that spending actually do for the business?
Linking marketing to business outcomes was the focus of a recent conversation between Alembic CEO and Founder, Tomás Puig, and host Seth Matlins on Forbes’ “The CEO’s Guide to Marketing.” They dug into marketing’s unsolved problems, from the trap of vanity metrics to the challenge of proving the ROI of brand building. Their discussion revealed why traditional models are failing and how a new approach, rooted in Causal AI, can finally connect marketing activities to revenue certainty.
Marketing’s Top Three Unsolved Problems
#1. Certainty vs. statistics
For decades, businesses have operated on deterministic data, such as double-entry accounting and supply chain numbers. "The entire rest of the organization has certainty," Puig explained. "And marketing has statistics." This gap forces marketers to present proxy metrics that often crumble under financial scrutiny.
A presentation may show millions of dollars in "value" from PR or social media, but it is often followed by a CFO asking why actual sales were only a fraction of that. As Puig noted from his experience as a CMO fixer for private equity, this is not just a communication issue; it's a systemic one.
Marketers often follow a playbook without connecting their actions to core business drivers, like gross margin. The result is a C-suite that views marketing spend as discretionary and its metrics as suspect. For a CFO, a lack of certainty is not a nuance. It can feel like fraud.
#2. Defining brand value
Nowhere is this measurement challenge more evident than in evaluating brand equity. Brand equity is often treated as an intangible asset or even a write-off. Puig argued, however, that how people see and interact with your brand can be the most significant friction-reducing factor in marketing.
When you're in a foreign country and need toothpaste, you grab the one logo you recognize. That brand recognition not only sold a product but also eliminated the friction of uncertainty, saving you time in making a decision.
In a B2B context, this effect is magnified. A strong brand can shorten a 12-month sales cycle to six months. The value of that brand, Puig contended, is the cost of running the entire business for those six months you just saved.
When framed this way, the brand is no longer a vague concept. It is a measurable force that decommoditizes a product, protects gross margin and accelerates revenue. Marketing can finally bridge the divide with the CFO and CEO by speaking the language of friction, margin and capital.
#3. Finding the energy to change a customer's state
Another challenge for marketers is understanding what it takes to acquire a customer. We often think in linear funnels, but human decisions are far more complex. Puig introduced a concept from neuroscience to reframe this. It takes significantly more energy to change a state than it does to sustain it.
Getting out of bed in the morning, or transitioning from sleep to wakefulness, is more complex than staying awake. Similarly, getting a customer to sign up for a new streaming service requires a "compelling moment" with enough energy to cause a state change. This could be a must-watch show like Game of Thrones or House of Cards.
Marketers often pitch for budgets sufficient to sustain a state, but the C-suite does not account for the massive upfront energy needed to achieve it. By identifying these high-energy compelling moments, marketers can better justify the investments required to move the needle.
From contact tracing to Causal AI: The Alembic approach
Marketers need a way to measure these complex, non-linear interactions. The inspiration for Alembic came from an unlikely source: COVID-19 contact tracing. "What is the difference between a contact trace and a marketing touch, mathematically?" Puig asked. "Nothing."
Just as epidemiologists model the spread of a disease, Alembic uses Causal AI to model the chain reactions within a business. By ingesting billions of data points, the platform identifies the proper drivers of revenue without relying on PI or cookies. This requires immense computing power, utilizing spiking neural networks that function as a digital twin of the human brain to normalize disparate data types and find patterns in short time frames.
This technology enables marketers to answer previously unanswerable questions, such as measuring the dollar-for-dollar ROI of a multi-year sports sponsorship. By identifying new chain reactions that appear only when the sponsorship is active, Alembic can pinpoint its actual value.
CMOs are looking to prove their value and drive sustainable growth. These insights empower marketing leaders with the knowledge and strategies to make a tangible impact in their organizations.
Speak the correct language: Frame your arguments around concepts the C-suite understands, such as friction reduction, gross margin, and the cost of capital. This approach ensures that your value as a marketer is recognized and appreciated by the C-suite.
Identify your "compelling moments." Pinpoint the high-energy events that have enough power to change a customer's state and justify your budget requests accordingly.
All channels have a capacity: Every marketing channel has a point of diminishing returns. Accurate intelligence lies in knowing how much to invest before that capacity is reached.
Move from measurement to intelligence: Do not just report on what happened. Use predictive tools to simulate future outcomes and find the optimal strategy for your next investment.
See how Alembic can transform your marketing measurement
As Puig and Matlins discussed, the future of marketing depends on moving from statistics to certainty. Alembic Technologies offers an AI-powered marketing intelligence platform that helps CMOs measure the impact of marketing. Built by scientists, mathematicians and marketers, the Alembic platform uses Causal AI to analyze billions of rows of data and predict which campaigns perform according to the metrics CMOs care about most. By providing this level of insight, Alembic's platform can help you speak the language of CFOs, prove the value of your marketing efforts and drive sustainable growth for your business.
See how your campaigns are driving revenue growth with Alembic
CMOs who focus on collecting and analyzing in-depth customer engagement metrics will be the ones to lead their brands to sustained growth. Discover how Alembic can help you track and interpret meaningful customer engagement metrics and drive business success. Book a demo with Alembic and harness the power of data-driven intelligence to achieve your 2025 goals and beyond.
