Refinery89 is putting brand lift measurement directly inside its Brandformance offer. The ad tech company, which sells publisher inventory across Europe and Latin America, announced a partnership with Brand Metrics on September 14, 2026. The promise: advertisers can see how audiences feel about a brand while a campaign is still live, rather than waiting for a post-campaign report.
What is changing
Refinery89 sells ads on a network of what it calls boutique, brand-safe publishers. Its Brandformance product tries to connect brand building with performance outcomes. The new integration attaches Brand Metrics questionnaires to those campaigns.
The surveys focus on four mid-funnel signals: awareness, consideration, preference and purchase intent. Results are benchmarked against more than 60,000 campaigns across 122 industry categories and more than 35 countries, according to Brand Metrics.
That benchmark matters. A lift number alone is hard to interpret. Seeing it against category norms can help media buyers judge whether a campaign is actually moving attitudes or just running.
Why mid-funnel measurement matters
Most conversion reporting looks at the bottom of the funnel: clicks, leads and purchases. Brand studies have traditionally reported after a campaign ends. Refinery89’s pitch sits in the gap: real-time, mid-funnel visibility.
For agencies and D2C growth teams, this can create a faster feedback loop. If consideration is not moving, creative or targeting can be changed before budget is gone. That is a practical use case, but it also comes with a tension: if you change creative mid-flight, you are no longer measuring the same campaign.
Ask these questions before you buy
The announcement leaves some important operational details unpublished. Our take: do not treat this as a standard add-on until you have clarity. Ask the vendor:
- Is there a control group, and how is it selected?
- What is the minimum impression or budget floor?
- Does the study cost extra on top of media?
- How often do results refresh?
- Are the four measures worded as purchase intent or action intent?
These are not academic details. Survey-based brand lift needs enough responses in exposed and control groups to be statistically defensible. Without published thresholds, buyers cannot compare this study against LoopMe, Cint, Utiq or other in-flight options.
What this means for your measurement stack
Refinery89 is a supply-side partner, not a buying platform. That makes this integration different from recent moves by LoopMe in The Trade Desk, or Cint inside illumin and Basis. Here, the company selling impressions is also packaging the evidence of their effect.
That can still be useful, but the credibility depends on methodology. Marketers should keep brand lift and incrementality separate. A survey tells you what people say about a brand; an incrementality test tells you whether ad exposure changed behaviour. A rise in stated purchase intent is a signal, not proof of sales.
Refinery89’s announcement is one more sign that in-flight brand measurement is becoming table stakes, especially in Europe and Latin America. The brands that benefit will be the ones that ask hard questions before relying on the dashboard.
Source: PPC Land
