Performance marketing used to be about creative and campaigns. Today the edge comes from signals infrastructure. Algorithms can only optimize what they can see.
Edgetag’s Signals Playbook breaks down this new reality in a refreshingly practical way. It introduces a 12-capability framework for building real first-party data infrastructure, and it separates what people think they need from what actually moves the needle once privacy and signal loss enter the equation.
For non-technical marketers, the playbook makes a critical distinction. There is tracking, and then there is infrastructure. Tracking captures events. Infrastructure preserves identity, enriches signals, unifies channels, and feeds platforms with the data they need to learn accurately.
The Signals playbook organizes capabilities into three maturity tiers.
Basic capabilities ensure platforms see the full customer journey and that identity persists across sessions for attribution and matching. Without this, algorithms are learning from partial truth, which drives up CAC and obscures which channels actually work
Intermediate capabilities shift from measurement to strategy. This is where brands optimize for new customer acquisition instead of repeat buyers, filter for high-margin products, adapt signals to how each ad platform attributes, and monitor signal degradation before campaigns suffer
For the non-technical marketer, this answers the long-standing question of why a clean pixel does not guarantee clean performance.
Advanced capabilities tackle the real world: journeys spanning multiple domains, consent that varies by region, and unified identity that powers not just ads, but attribution, enrichment, fraud prevention, and lifecycle automation from the same data layer
The strategic implication is clear. Creative and campaigns still matter, but they are downstream of infrastructure. If platforms cannot see who converted, what they bought, whether they were new, and which channel influenced the journey, the algorithm defaults to the easiest path, which is often re-converting existing customers instead of acquiring new ones.
The gap between brands operating with dated tracking versus mature signals infrastructure shows up in CAC, efficiency, and customer mix, not just attribution reports. And as the playbook notes, the brands that build this layer will compound advantage as platforms become more automated and less configurable.
Download the Signals Playbook to see the full capabilities framework and benchmark your infrastructure maturity
