Magnite today published an analysis, produced with brand lift measurement company Cint, stating that ad recall lift across campaigns activated through its platform was 136% higher than Cint's benchmarks. The blog post, dated October 21, 2026, and written by Allison Smith, Director, Strategic Partnerships at Magnite, adds figures for connected TV and for consumers who saw an ad four to nine times, but it does not disclose how many campaigns, respondents, markets or months the comparison covers.

In Short

Magnite, a company that sells ad space for streaming services, apps and websites, asked Cint, a company that runs surveys measuring whether ads change what people think, to compare campaigns sold through Magnite with Cint's usual averages. Magnite says people remembered its ads much better than those averages, and that streaming TV ads did better at getting people to consider a brand. The catch is that the company selling the ad space published the results, and the post leaves out the basic details, such as how many campaigns were checked, that would let you judge how solid the numbers are.

What Magnite published

The document is a blog post on Magnite's Insights site, carrying the headline "Beyond the Impression: What Cint Brand Lift Data Reveals About Campaigns on Magnite." It is marked as a four-minute read and tagged CTV, Measurement, Media buying and Streaming. The byline belongs to a Magnite employee, not to Cint, although Cint's logo appears on the header image.

According to Magnite, the company "recently teamed up with one of our brand lift measurement partners, Cint, to compare aggregated, anonymized data from campaigns activated through Magnite against Cint's benchmarks." That sentence is the full description of the method in the post. It names who supplied the data and what it was compared against. It does not say which party selected the campaigns, which party calculated the comparisons, or whether Cint reviewed the final figures before publication.

The roles of the two companies are worth setting out plainly. Magnite is a supply-side platform: it sells advertising inventory on behalf of publishers and streaming services, and earns money when buyers spend through it. Cint sells survey-based measurement. Since September 28, 2026, Magnite has been the first platform to offer Cint's self-service studies that pair brand lift with sales lift to clients running ClearLine or streaming campaigns. Both companies therefore have a commercial interest in results that show campaigns on Magnite performing well and in buyers commissioning more lift studies.

The figures, one by one

The post reports six numbers. All of them are expressed relative to something else, and the reference point is not always the same.

Ad recall across all campaigns

"Across the campaigns analyzed, Magnite's ad recall lift was 136% higher than Cint benchmarks," according to the post. Brand lift studies of this kind typically survey people who were exposed to a campaign and a control group that was not, then report the difference. The 136% figure is therefore a comparison of two differences: the lift Magnite campaigns produced against the lift Cint's benchmark campaigns produced. Read literally, Magnite's average lift in ad recall was about 2.36 times the benchmark lift. It is not a statement that 136% more people remembered the ads.

The post does not give the underlying lift values in percentage points. A benchmark lift of 3 points against a Magnite lift of about 7 points would produce a 136% gap. So would a benchmark of 10 points against about 24. The practical meaning of the two cases is very different, and the post offers no way to tell which applies.

Connected TV

On CTV, the post gives three figures, each described as approximate:

  • Ad recall lift about 32% above Cint benchmarks
  • Brand consideration lift about 70% above Cint benchmarks
  • Brand awareness lift about 11% higher

The post is not explicit about which benchmark the CTV figures use. If CTV campaigns were compared with a CTV-specific benchmark, the 32% and the 136% are measured against different baselines and cannot be set side by side. If both were compared with the same overall benchmark, the arithmetic implies that non-CTV campaigns drove the 136% average up, since CTV alone came in at roughly 32%. The post does not name those other formats. Magnite also sells display, online video and mobile app inventory, but none of those formats is named in the analysis.

According to Magnite, "Taken together, the findings show Magnite CTV campaigns outperforming benchmarks across multiple stages of the brand journey - from building awareness to strengthening consideration." The awareness figure, at about 11%, is the smallest number in the post. No figure for purchase intent appears anywhere, even though Cint's Lucid Measurement product measures purchase intent as a standard metric, according to earlier PPC Land coverage of Cint's integration with illumin.

Frequency

The third section covers exposure counts. "Among consumers exposed to an ad between four and nine times, ad recall lift across Magnite campaigns was nearly three times higher," according to the post. "The same exposure range also produced a notable result for brand favorability of 5 times higher."

The comparison base for both multiples is missing. "Three times higher" could mean three times the Cint benchmark, three times the lift among people who saw the ad one to three times, or three times the lift across all exposed respondents. The sentence supports each reading. Brand favorability appears only in this section, so there is no overall favorability figure against which the 5x result could be checked. No other frequency band is reported, which means the post does not show whether lift kept rising above nine exposures, flattened, or fell.

Magnite qualifies the result itself. "While frequency alone cannot explain these results, the findings suggest that repeated exposure within the right environments may help reinforce a brand's message and give it more opportunity to resonate," the post states. The causal question matters here. People who see an ad four to nine times are not a random slice of the audience. They tend to be heavier media users, or people who matched targeting criteria more closely, or viewers of particular programmes. Any of those differences could raise recall independently of the number of exposures.

What the two spokespeople said

The post carries two quotes, one from each company.

Regan Kelly, Senior Sales Manager at Cint, said: "When brand lift consistently outpaces industry benchmarks, it signals that a campaign is doing more than generating exposure - it's actively moving consumers along the decision journey. What stands out in these findings is the consistency of performance across the funnel. Seeing marked outperformance across both recall and consideration suggests that creative, audience targeting and media environment are working together to build stronger brand outcomes."

The Cint quote attributes the result to three factors together - creative, targeting and environment - rather than to the platform alone. The data in the post cannot separate them. Creative quality varies by advertiser and is not controlled for in a cross-campaign benchmark comparison.

Kristen Williams, SVP of Strategic Partnerships at Magnite, said: "These findings reinforce that campaign effectiveness is about more than simply reaching an audience. The quality of the media environment, how often consumers encounter a message and the overall advertising experience all have a role to play in building meaningful brand outcomes. By working closely with partners like Cint to better understand that impact, we can help advertisers turn those insights into smarter decisions around supply, frequency and campaign strategy."

The concluding section of the post repeats the framing. "While no single factor can explain that performance, the results reinforce the importance of looking beyond reach and delivery alone," according to Magnite.

What the post leaves out

Several details that would normally accompany a benchmark comparison are absent. The post does not state:

  • The number of campaigns or advertisers included
  • The number of survey respondents, overall or per metric
  • The time period covered
  • The markets or countries
  • The formats beyond CTV, or the split of campaigns between them
  • How Cint's benchmarks are built, including which verticals, formats and years they cover, and whether they include campaigns that ran on Magnite
  • How campaigns were selected for the analysis, and whether any measured campaigns were excluded
  • Statistical significance or confidence intervals for any figure
  • Sample sizes for the CTV subset and the four-to-nine exposure group
  • How exposure frequency was counted, and whether it covered only Magnite impressions or all campaign impressions

The selection question is the most consequential. Brand lift studies on a given platform are commissioned by advertisers who chose to measure, and the post does not say whether every Cint study run on Magnite inventory went into the aggregate. An analysis built on studies advertisers volunteered to run is not the same as a random sample of campaigns on the platform.

The control-group design is also not described in the post. Cint's own announcements, covered by PPC Land in June, describe an exposed-versus-control method in which survey answers from people who saw a campaign are compared with those from people who did not. PPC Land noted on September 28 that Cint had not disclosed whether its control groups are randomised holdouts or matched after the fact. That question carries over to this analysis.

Context: Cint's year and Magnite's CTV business

Cint has spent 2026 embedding its measurement inside buying platforms. illumin built Cint brand lift into its programmatic campaign setup on May 14, claiming studies could launch up to 90% faster. Basis followed with live brand lift measurement inside omnichannel campaigns in the US and Canada in June. On June 17, Cint combined brand and sales lift in one in-flight dashboard in a US open beta. Triton Partners completed its take-private of Cint on August 24, according to the September 28 PPC Land report, and the Magnite self-service rollout came a month later.

Cint has also been a data supplier to other companies' research. On October 13, PPC Land reported that a Lumen, Amazon Ads and Cint study of 270 cross-media campaigns found purchase intent needed a median 47 seconds of cumulative ad attention. That study at least gave a campaign count. Today's Magnite post does not.

For Magnite, CTV is the business line the post emphasises. In the second quarter of 2026, Magnite reported CTV contribution ex-TAC of $97.1 million, up 36%, out of a total of $189.6 million, and raised full-year growth guidance to 13% to 14%. Its third-quarter guidance put CTV contribution ex-TAC at $98 million to $100 million. Third-quarter results have not yet been reported. Research showing CTV campaigns beating brand benchmarks supports the sales case for that segment.

The post is also the latest in a run of Magnite-published research this autumn. On September 2, PPC Land covered a Magnite Insights Q&A in which Cognitiv said Magnite curation cut click costs 31%, with no comparison group defined. On October 4, PPC Land reported on a Magnite survey of 883 Swedes in which 54% cited product relevance as a reason for ad recall, again without fieldwork dates or a margin of error.

The frequency debate

The four-to-nine exposure finding lands in a contested area. In February, Google researchers questioned advertising frequency orthodoxy using YouTube Brand Lift data in which a second impact indexed at 1.5 to 1.8 against the first, below the 2x that would mean equal value. Their reading was that the first exposure delivers the most, with each additional one worth less.

Magnite's figure does not contradict that directly, because a higher lift at four to nine exposures is compatible with diminishing returns per exposure: total lift can rise while each extra impression adds less. Without lift figures for one to three exposures and for ten or more, the post cannot show where the curve bends. Planners setting reach and frequency targets would need those other bands, along with the cost of buying the extra impressions, to compare the result with alternatives such as reaching more people fewer times.

Vendor-published lift claims have become common in CTV. In August, PPC Land reported on BrightLine's figures of a 33% increase in unaided recall and a 12% increase in brand favorability for interactive formats against standard video, also without disclosed sample sizes. None of these numbers can be compared with each other, since each uses a different baseline and method.

Why this matters for buyers and sellers

Brand lift studies are one of the few outcome measures that apply to upper-funnel CTV and video campaigns, where clicks and conversions say little. A platform-level claim that campaigns beat benchmarks is an argument for routing brand budgets through that platform. For buyers weighing supply paths, the relevant question is whether the comparison holds once campaign mix, advertiser category, creative and audience are accounted for. Today's post does not provide the material to check that.

For publishers selling through Magnite, the figures could show up in sales conversations as evidence of what their inventory delivers. The aggregate, however, mixes many publishers' inventory, and the post does not break results down by publisher, content type or daypart.

Magnite closes the post by describing brand lift measurement as "not simply as a scorecard at the end of a campaign, but as a tool for understanding where advertising is making the greatest impact and applying those learnings to future campaigns." The tools for running such studies on individual campaigns through Magnite and Cint now exist. The platform-wide comparison published today remains a summary whose inputs are not public.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Magnite, a supply-side platform selling CTV, online video, display and other inventory, published the analysis under the byline of Allison Smith, Director, Strategic Partnerships at Magnite, with data from brand lift measurement company Cint. Regan Kelly of Cint and Kristen Williams of Magnite are quoted.

What: Magnite says ad recall lift on campaigns activated through its platform was 136% higher than Cint benchmarks. On CTV, ad recall lift was about 32% above benchmark, consideration lift about 70% and awareness lift about 11%. Among people exposed four to nine times, recall lift was "nearly three times higher" and favorability "5 times higher," against an unstated base. Campaign count, respondents, period, markets, other formats, selection and significance are not disclosed.

When: The post is dated October 21, 2026. The period of the underlying campaigns is not stated.

Where: The post appears on Magnite's Insights site. The markets covered by the campaigns are not specified.

Why: The analysis supports Magnite's case that its inventory, particularly CTV, delivers brand outcomes above industry norms, a month after Magnite became the first platform to offer Cint's self-service brand and sales lift studies. Because the platform selling the media published the comparison without its inputs, the figures are vendor research that buyers cannot independently check.