For a long time, marketers have been drawn to the idea that more reach equals better results. It made sense in a world of mass media. The more people you can get your ad in front of, the better your odds of landing your message with someone who might care. Metrics like CPM and GRPs became the foundation of media planning, offering a way to buy impressions at scale and measure success in volume.

But today, that logic is being turned on its head.

In an era where media consumption is fragmented across screens, channels, and formats, and where privacy laws continue to evolve globally, the old playbook is showing cracks. Yet many marketers still find themselves in the same cycle: comparing CPMs, picking the cheapest option, and equating more impressions with more impact.

Here’s the uncomfortable question: What if broad reach is costing you more than it's delivering? Are you reaching real people, or just racking up numbers? And are those numbers actually moving the needle on business outcomes that positively impact growth?

The cheap reach illusion

At first glance, a low CPM appears to be a win. But if only a sliver of those impressions are actually reaching your intended audience, the effective CPM skyrockets. The old adage 'you get what you pay for' rings true here, as low-quality impressions are tied to low-quality CPMs or often unmeasurable impressions. 

Imagine spending your budget to serve three million impressions. If only a small percentage of those land with the people you actually care about - people ready to buy your product or in your intended target audience - then how much value are you truly getting?

This is the illusion of cheap reach: It appears efficient, but masks enormous waste.

First-party data collaboration offers a smarter alternative, redefining what effective reach truly means. Instead of chasing volume, it enables you to build custom audiences with precision and activate them across trusted media partners. Every impression reaches a real person with a significantly higher propensity to convert.

But doing this requires a mindset shift: Moving away from the allure of broad, low-cost reach to an audience-first approach that prioritizes quality and relevance.

First-party data collaboration: Smarter targeting, better outcomes

With first-party data collaboration, marketers move from the vague promise of reach to the certainty of resonance.

Rather than broadcasting your message to the masses and hoping it finds the right people, you start with known audiences: customers in your CRM, loyalty members, or high-intent lookalikes. Brands with low levels of first-party data, like CPGs and car manufacturers, can easily leverage second-party data to gain a better understanding of their customers.

This approach enables marketers to build on a verified foundation of intelligence, providing a clear understanding of what your highest-converting customers look like. From here, marketers can gradually test different audience strategies based on that seed audience to build scale and performance over time.

In addition, the power of first-party data collaboration enables you to transparently plan where to reach those individuals and which channels are most effective for your audience before a campaign has even launched. It's a departure from the spray-and-pray approach to one that empowers advertisers to intelligently enhance performance and significantly reduce media waste.

This is a cost-effective, efficient, and transparent way of creating campaigns that drive real, measurable business outcomes. And all of this happens without compromising on consumer privacy or requiring you to move, share, or commingle data. 

Real business outcomes: Driving results with InfoSum

At InfoSum, we’ve pioneered and led the way in first-party data collaboration, empowering advertisers across many verticals to connect with high-performance audiences and deliver more effective advertising experiences. Let's take a look at some examples:

Automotive

Take the recent launch of Auto Match from ITV, a partnership between ITV and Carwow underpinned by InfoSum’s data collaboration platform. Through Auto Match, car manufacturers can securely leverage Carwow's wealth of first-party data to accurately reach 1.3 million in-market auto intenders on ITVX and measure key campaign impact on key outcomes, including web traffic, car configurations, and sales.

Retail

The convergence of retail media and connected TV, powered by data collaboration, enables CPGs to safely leverage shopper and loyalty card data to reach in-category buyers or cross-sell to existing brand customers. These tactics have empowered CPGs to drive results of up to 122% sales uplift.

Financial Services

The ability to focus on only relevant audiences and suppress customers and prospects who don’t meet product eligibility criteria is a game-changer for financial services, a strategy successfully executed by UK retail bank TSB with Global, resulting in a 31% increase in account applications.

Furthermore, it enables the timely delivery of messages around insurance renewals or remortgaging, helping brands to show up at critical moments in the buying journey.

CTV

Data collaboration isn't limited to lower-funnel activity either. Look at how Ads & Data drove an incredible 2.5x incremental reach for Cristal among its target audience for a brand awareness campaign, showing how precision can amplify scale when done right.

It’s time to look at the bigger picture

Cheap reach might help hit vanity metrics. But vanity metrics don't move the needle when it comes to driving outcomes. That comes from meeting your audience where they consume content and showing up in the moments that matter.

An audience-first approach through first-party data collaboration ensures every impression is targeted, every advertising experience is relevant, and every campaign delivers on what matters most: business results.

Start your data collaboration journey today.