Behavior Is The New Identity: Albert Thompson On The Future Of Measurement

When it comes to advertising, Albert Thompson, Director of Digital Innovation at Walton Isaacson, has seen it all——and he’s not afraid to call out where the industry keeps missing the mark. 

In this Q&A, part of The Measure’s Truth in Numbers series, Thompson breaks down why we’ve made measurement too complicated, how retail and commerce media really work, and why identity isn’t about data points—it’s about behavior. As he puts it, if you’re not driving real action, the rest is just noise.

The Measure: For those who may not know, what kind of agency is Walton Isaacson?

Albert Thompson: Walton Isaacson is a multicultural agency, for lack of a better term. It was founded by Aaron Walton, and next month marks our 20th anniversary. We’ve worked with major clients like Lexus and were involved with Black Panther one and two. We’ve done a lot of custom content work, too. The whole premise was that the industry didn’t need another agency—it needed one that thought differently. Aaron’s background was at Pepsi, working on the Michael Jackson campaigns. That’s how he started, and that creative energy really defines the agency’s DNA.

The Measure: Tell us a bit about your role and focus.

Albert Thompson: I live in a few universes—immersive experiences, gaming, data and identity, creators, and CTV. I’ve been buying digital for 25 years, so I’ve seen everything from the early search engines to how the ecosystem evolved. I’ve probably spoken on almost every topic related to digital media and technology. My role now is innovation. I don’t do as much media buying hands-on anymore, but I’ve always been more curious about the future—how it’s going to change things—and then coming back to tell people how long they have before it does.

The Measure: What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the advertising industry?

Albert Thompson: The biggest conundrum I’ve seen in the marketplace is measurement. It’s become mystifying. People forget that all businesses exist to make money—otherwise they’d be nonprofits, and even nonprofits have to generate revenue. The biggest thing is outcomes. Companies spend money to make money, and most of them know the math: spend a million, make ten million; spend a hundred million, make a billion.

The thing that’s gotten lost is that brands are supply-chain businesses. They make a product, ship it, and need people to buy it and repeat that process. When we talk about measurement, that’s the real conversation—did we sell more? Did the product move? Do we need to change how we ship or distribute?

Measurement is a spectrum of things. Each element—impressions, delivery, completion rates—has a role, but none of them are the full story. Advertising’s goal is to grab attention. If you’re not getting attention, what are you doing? That’s the starting point for ROI. Are we generating the return we need? Are products moving off shelves? Do we need to ramp up production or shift to certain retailers like Walmart or Target? Those are business outcomes.

When I hear people talk about KPIs as if they’re the end goal, I cringe. A KPI isn’t money—it’s insurance. It means you’re doing what you were asked to do, not necessarily what the business needs. Measurement should be about whether the spend created margin that feeds back into marketing and drives growth.

The conversation has become too noisy. It’s turned into B2B talk, when really it’s B2B2C. The consumer is the only guaranteed winner. Everyone else—brands, agencies, platforms—can go to zero.

With AI coming into the picture, it’s going to start calling B.S. on a lot of this. It’s going to expose what’s real and what’s not, who’s adding value and who isn’t. The idea of “agency decisioning” is being handed over to machines because too many humans stopped caring enough to do it right.

The Measure: You’ve also spent a long time in shopper and retail media. Where do you see that going next?

Albert Thompson: It started with Clipper Magazine. Brands would put coupons in it, people would clip them, and that drove store visits. Then it evolved—retailers realized if you wanted shelf space, you had to buy into their ecosystem. That’s how shopper marketing really began.

Today’s retail media is the modern version of that. It’s media that sits on top of the supply chain. Brands like Walmart and Target figured out that if they control the shelf and the data, they control the economics. That’s why retail media has exploded—it’s directly tied to product movement, not just awareness.

Commerce media builds on that. It’s about activating every signal and trigger that leads to a sale. Retail media sits on top of the supply chain, but commerce media connects everything around it—social platforms, shoppable content, AI-driven shopping experiences. The focus has shifted from top-of-funnel awareness to driving revenue at every touchpoint.

Retail media isn’t sexy, but it’s powerful. The question has become: are we driving transactions? Because every company, at its core, is in the supply chain business. That’s why the focus on commerce has finally taken center stage.

The Measure: Let’s talk about identity. What are your thoughts on how it’s being handled today?

Albert Thompson: People make identity more complicated than it needs to be. It’s not Jason Bourne. Identity is simply where you go, how you spend, and who you associate with. That tells you almost everything you need to know.

We’ve over-engineered it with IDs and clean rooms. But think about how intelligence agencies do it—they map movement and behavior. They don’t need endless data layers. The same logic applies here. We’ve got to get back to personas and profiles, not overcomplicated datasets.

Behavior reveals identity. If someone shops at Walmart every week, they’re a Walmart shopper. If someone eats at Burger King regularly, that’s another profile. Nobody fakes walking into a store—they go because they want something. That’s intent.

We have to stop obsessing over hashed IDs and start listening to behavioral signals. Consumers are always signaling what they’re willing to do and what they care about. We just don’t always listen because we’re too busy cleaning data.

The Measure: How do you connect that to multicultural marketing?

Albert Thompson: You have to observe the person, not the profile. People are layered—culturally, emotionally, situationally—and they shift between those layers. Some people move to a new country and adopt a completely new identity. Others hold on to their traditions. You can’t assume either way. You have to observe their behavior consistently to understand their intent.

Identity is fluid. It’s not static. That’s why behavioral accuracy is more important than data accuracy. What people do defines who they are in that moment.

The Measure: So everything—measurement, retail, identity—comes down to behavior?

Albert Thompson: Always. Whether it’s a shelf, a screen, or a mobile app, the question is: did behavior change? Did someone care enough to act? Did they buy, engage, come back? Everything else—data, KPIs, dashboards—is just noise if it doesn’t tie back to that.