Alex Andreyev Of Evidnt On Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget and Why
An Interview With Kieran Powell Kieran Powell, EVP of Channel V Media Feb 24, 2025
Keep testing with real-world sales as the benchmark — Clicks don’t equal sales, so ensure your metrics tie back to actual revenue.
Inan age where marketing landscapes are rapidly evolving and consumer behaviors are constantly shifting, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) play a pivotal role in steering their organizations’ marketing strategies towards success. With a plethora of channels, platforms, and techniques at their disposal, the decision on where to allocate the marketing budget is more critical than ever. We’re seeking to explore questions like: What factors influence their decisions? How do they balance between digital and traditional marketing channels? What role does data play in their decision-making process? And importantly, why they choose to invest in certain areas over others? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Alex Andreyev.
Alex Andreyev is the CEO and Co-founder of Evidnt, a data and analytics platform that provides deep sales insights and analytics for CPG brands. Alex is a known innovator and leader, having developed the first multicultural data platform for Gravity, which was later acquired by Dentsu. He also contributed to the development of IPG’s maturity canvas and led data, analytics, and programmatic teams for major companies such as Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Sara Lee, Este Lauder, Darden, IBM, and AMEX. Alex is recognized as one of the foremost thought leaders in the retail and CPG data development and management space.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I’ve spent most of my career at the intersection of marketing, data, and technology, helping brands optimize their media investments. My journey began in direct response and performance marketing, working with brands like AMEX, TD Ameritrade, MetLife, Caesars, and others. While leading performance marketing for Coca-Cola, I saw firsthand the gaps between media spending and real-world sales data. Brands were making decisions based on incomplete or delayed insights, leading to significant lost revenue. That realization led me to found Evidnt, where we help CPG brands bridge that gap — providing them with real-time data to measure, target, and optimize their campaigns.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Early in my career, I failed to properly place tracking pixels on a campaign page, meaning we were spending money without knowing if it was driving sales. It was a painful but valuable lesson that taught me two key things: 1) Always verify your operational setup before launching any campaign, and 2) Media investment should always be directly connected to performance results. This experience solidified why I’m so passionate about helping CPG brands improve sales based on data rather than assumptions.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Yes! We’re currently developing a platform for brands, marketers, and investors that allow them to query near real-time data in a transparent way, with deep, actionable insights — similar to ChatGPT, but for marketing and sales data. This will help brands optimize their strategies and investments faster, with real sales data, instead of relying on delayed or incomplete insights.
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. Can you share an experience where a unique or unconventional budget allocation led to unexpected success in your marketing campaign?
With faster and more accurate data, we no longer rely on user-level targeting. Instead, we use auto-optimization for markets where sales are increasing, applying hyper-local targeting. This strategy has led to nearly a 40% increase in sales for some brands, proving that focusing on market-level trends rather than individual users can be more effective.
How do you balance investing in emerging marketing trends versus traditional, proven strategies in your budget decisions? Can you give us an example?
Ongoing testing and targeting are key. Early in Evidnt’s journey (2021), we probabilistically connected sales to individual users and tested one-to-one targeting against our buyer cohort-based targeting. What we found was eye-opening — geo-cohort targeting not only expanded reach and lowered CPMs (since we weren’t competing for the same cookied users), but it also drove an 18% improvement in sales lift versus one-to-one targeting. This proves that you don’t always need direct identity matching to drive impact — sometimes, context and intent matter more.
In what ways has data-driven decision-making influenced your approach to allocating marketing budgets, and can you provide an example of this in action?
Data is everything. Getting real-time sales data from tens of thousands of retailers nationwide gives us a strong performance indicator to optimize clients’ targeting and media spend in real-time. Our Evidnt Nexus platform takes this further by allowing brands to integrate their own sales data — whether from distributors, Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, or Target — giving them a holistic view of performance. This doesn’t just impact advertising; it helps brands optimize investment across marketing, promotions, and discounting strategies.
How do you evaluate the ROI of different marketing channels and decide where to invest more or cut back?
One-to-one marketing doesn’t make sense in every channel or every step of the buying journey. With the limitations on cookies and IDs and the lack of clear feedback from platforms like Google and Meta, brands must take a more holistic approach to sales attribution. Outside of loyalty programs and email marketing, brands need to rethink their strategies and focus on what actually drives sales, not just audience identity.
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget, and Why?”
1 . Get your data house in order — Ensure you’re tapping into all sales channels (DTC, retail, e-commerce, distributors, RMNs) to make data-driven marketing decisions.
2 . Tap into new and emerging data sources — Privacy changes mean brands must explore alternative datasets beyond cookies and user IDs.
3 . Reevaluate your targeting strategy — One-to-one marketing isn’t dead, but it should be one part of a larger approach rather than the sole focus it’s become over the past decade.
4 . Demand transparency and speed from data providers — Brands need faster, more accurate data to optimize in near real-time, not months later.
5 . Keep testing with real-world sales as the benchmark — Clicks don’t equal sales, so ensure your metrics tie back to actual revenue.
Could you discuss a challenging budget decision you faced, how you navigated it, and the impact it had on your overall marketing strategy?
TikTok is a massive driver of trends, so being in front of those users can help brands break through the noise of established competitors. However, with geopolitical pressures surrounding TikTok, we help brands test and measure its true impact on sales. For example, when TikTok was temporarily removed in the U.S., many brands saw a 30–40% drop in online traffic. However, when we looked at offline sales data, the change was minimal. It was a small “blackout,” but we’ll see if a longer delay significantly impacts offline sales. Regardless of what happens next with TikTok, we’ll continue helping brands make data-driven reallocation decisions.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I’d push for marketing transparency at scale. Too much ad spend disappears into the digital ether with no accountability. Imagine if every marketing dollar could be tracked to real impact — whether sales, awareness, or brand loyalty. It’s time to stop treating marketing as a cost center and start treating it as a measurable, accountable growth engine.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Follow our insights and posts on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/evidnt), and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn (https://linkedin.com/in/alexandreyev).
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
This was a great conversation — thank you for having me! Marketing is evolving faster than ever, and I love discussing how brands can stay ahead, optimize their budgets, and drive real sales impact. Looking forward to continuing the conversation!
