We asked three industry leaders. Here's what they said.
Performance marketing is a numbers business. But the people who've spent the most time inside it, judging it, building it, leading it, will tell you something interesting: the numbers are rarely the whole story.
Ahead of this year's ThinkTank APAC, we asked three of our judges a question we think the industry needs to sit with more often:
When you look at a publisher, advertiser, or team and think 'that's genuinely excellent work' - what are you actually seeing?
Their answers said more than any benchmark report could.
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Real performance holds up under scrutiny
Zane McIntyre, CEO and Founder at Commission Factory, has seen a lot of impressive-looking results. He's learned to look past them.
"Genuinely excellent work usually shows up in the quality behind the result, not just the size of the number," he says. "Big numbers can look impressive on a slide, but real performance holds up under scrutiny."
The questions he asks: Did this drive new customers? Did it grow profitably? Did both sides of the partnership benefit? Was the result repeatable, or was it a one-off spike?
"The best work usually has a clear strategy behind it, not just a good outcome."
Kevin Edwards, CEO at the Affiliate & Partner Marketing Association, frames it similarly, but adds a project management dimension that often goes unspoken.
"A plan well executed requires a real commitment to deliver from the initial idea to end goal," he says. "Often this requires significant and ongoing input from multiple stakeholders in different departments across various businesses. They all need to be aligned and fully signed up to the vision. If one part of that ecosystem breaks down, the entire campaign can fail."
His conclusion: "An idea isn't enough. The mechanics and project management put into the delivery are just as important."
Gai Le Roy, CEO at IAB Australia, adds a third dimension, competitive context.
"Results that provide true business outcomes rather than just marketing metrics stand out," she says. "The best entries give context beyond the organisation submitting. If EV sales go up when the whole market is going up, try to reference how you're achieving better results than your competitors."
In other words: if the tide is rising, show us you're rising faster.
The things that don't show up in the dashboard
If the first question was about what excellent work looks like, the second cut deeper: what does the industry talk about too little?
The answers were consistent and worth taking seriously.
Zane's answer was direct: "I wish more people understood that performance marketing is at its best when it's treated as a partnership channel, not a discount or last-click channel."
"We often talk about tracking, commission rates, attribution and ROAS which all matter. But we talk less about the human layer: the quality of the relationship, the clarity of communication, and the willingness to think longer term. In a channel built around measurable outcomes, those softer parts often become the reason the numbers improve."
Kevin wants more stories. Genuinely more stories.
"I want more hearts and minds engagement. I've read far too many award entries that focus on return on investment as the key driver of success rather than the marketing goal of the campaign. Studies show that people remember stories considerably more than statistics so focus on the emotional connection rather than abstract numbers that can be hard to contextualise."
He recalls a campaign from a decade ago that still sticks with him: a hotel company that served geo-fenced discount offers around train stations on key evenings around Christmas, targeting people who'd missed their last train home.
"A genius idea. I've no recollection of the numbers but will always remember this burst of creativity in a sea of stats and ROI numbers."
Gai's answer focused on creative execution. Specifically, how rarely it gets discussed relative to placement and pricing.
"We hear a lot about placement, discounts and partnerships but not enough around the creative execution. How did language, copy, images and positioning help with success? Award entries shine when you can truly understand the connection with customers and potential customers."
What this means for the work you're doing right now
Three leaders. Three different vantage points. But the through-line is hard to miss.
Real performance isn't just about the metric, it's about what's underneath it. The strategy that shaped it. The relationships that sustained it. The creative thinking that differentiated it.
And crucially: whether both sides of the partnership actually came out ahead.
These are the conversations happening at ThinkTank APAC. Not in a theoretical way, in a room full of the people who build, run, and judge the work every day.
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