Business Intelligence Strategies for Paid Media Revenue Streams

Dots Oyebolu and Cory Henke, Founder and CEO of Variable Media, discuss modern paid media intelligence. Cory shares insights from his journey via major agencies and platforms to build a data-first paid media agency. He unpacks the challenges and philosophies around attribution and campaign measurement and explains how business intelligence tools like Power BI help brands unlock deeper visibility into what really drives performance.

Key Takeaways:

(01:20) Cory’s marketing journey.

(04:36) Marketers who rely solely on in-platform data miss the bigger picture — merging CRM, web analytics and ad platforms reveals deeper insights.

(07:51) Cory believes that attribution is unsolvable because great outcomes stem from many variables.

(09:50) In a dynamic ad landscape, Cory emphasizes having a conservative projection and a flexible testing strategy.

(11:16) For new brands, organic growth should precede paid media — proving demand without ad spend is key to long-term success.

(13:03) Attribution models are biased by platform incentives; YouTube, for instance, creates halo effects that platforms often credit to search.

(16:28) Cory’s team customizes attribution by extracting campaign data from multiple platforms, merging it via Power BI for clearer performance storytelling.

(21:31) CPM is Cory’s favorite marketing metric — unlike other KPIs, it reveals raw costs and helps evaluate the efficiency of reach, regardless of engagement.

(27:42) Staying top of mind and testing new formats is key as digital advertising continues to evolve beyond traditional performance metrics.

Resources Mentioned:

Cory Henke

https://www.linkedin.com/in/coryhenke/

Variable Media | LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/variable-media/

Variable Media | Website

https://variable.media/

Power BI

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/products/power-bi

Cory Henke on Twitter

https://twitter.com/CoryHenke

Insightful Links:

https://online.mason.wm.edu/blog/data-analytics-in-digital-marketing

https://www.akkio.com/post/business-intelligence-in-marketing

https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/erp/business-intelligence-strategy.shtml

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