John Terrana, President of the Americas and Global Chief Media Officer at VaynerMedia, explains why attention isn’t just a KPI. From TikTok affiliates to YouTube’s overlooked power, he lays out how real-time buying, creative talent, and common-sense measurement can unlock real growth.
At POSSIBLE 2025, we spoke with John Terrana, President of the Americas and Global Chief Media Officer at VaynerMedia, to discuss media’s most valuable currency: attention. We also chatted about what brands are still getting wrong.
For Terrana, attention isn’t just a performance metric. The signal should shape every decision, from how marketers build media plans to where they place their bets.
That belief underpins how Vayner builds media plans, talent, and client relationships in a market where the scroll never stops and the platforms keep multiplying. And in this world, that means moving faster, getting closer to audiences, and rethinking what it means to perform.
▶️ Watch the full interview below, then scroll for more highlights from our conversation.
Always On Means Always Paying Attention
Plenty of agencies talk about being always on. For Vayner, that doesn’t mean producing endless output. It’s staying on top of where attention is actually going.
“The whole world is online 24/7. What keeps it fresh is following consumer attention.”
Terrana says attention moves faster than media dollars, and that’s where opportunity lives. Real-time media strategy starts with tracking what’s moving in culture, not just where media dollars have traditionally been spent, whether it’s a new show, a new TikTok trend, or a new social commerce mechanic.
“New platform, new show, new trend on social… that’s what you really have to be monitoring in real time,” he said.
Social Commerce = Brandformance
If you want to know where underpriced attention is right now, Terrana says it’s social commerce.
Social commerce and affiliate-driven media, especially on platforms like TikTok, are delivering reach, impact, and sales simultaneously.
“It’s a perfect ad unit… We sometimes call it brandformance—ads that live at the intersection of branding and performance.”
He says brands are sleeping on influencer content and affiliate-driven commerce, which gives them distribution, creativity, and conversion in one feed and scales organically through the creator economy.
Brands that aren’t playing in live shopping or social storefronts? “You’re going to miss an absolutely huge trend,” he said.
Stop Waiting for Yearly Measurement
When asked what brands ask for most, and what he wishes they were asking for, Terrana talked about them asking about attention, performance, and strategy. But slow legacy measurement models are still hanging over their heads.
“I wish brands would stop focusing so much on old-school measurement frameworks… and way more on real-time metrics and common sense.”
Quarterly, semiannual, or annual measurement models can’t keep up with today’s pace. Instead, he says, look at what’s changing in the macro, monitor shifts weekly, and stay adaptive. They should adjust their plans like traders, not archivists.
Want to Scale? Start With Talent
This one was no surprise coming from a Vayner exec. It’s the idea that media performance starts with the team.
“The number one muscle to build is the ability to attract, retain, and grow young talent.”
Terrana says Vayner invests in training young buyers to understand platform shifts and consumer behavior before teaching traditional media tactics.
This gives them the ability to track attention in real time. That agility, he says, is how they stay fast and win trust with clients.
Google’s Future Looks… Biddable
As for where things are headed? Terrana predicts more biddable buying across the board.
“The full shift away from upfront commitments into real-time, audience-based platforms… it’s happening slower than it should.”
He shared that the upfront, as we know it, is fading, and more brands should treat all media like biddable inventory.
“TV is Facebook. Once you lean into that shift in buying, it unlocks so much more.”
YouTube Is Undervalued
Terrana points to YouTube as the next big ad platform that is still undervalued. That’s even as it expands to TV screens, Shorts, and search.
Brands should buy videos like they buy social—self-serve, audience-first, and fully measured.
“It’s a really powerful platform. And I actually think people are sleeping on it for how much it can do.”
With full-funnel integration, YouTube offers scale, targeting, and creative control, but it isn’t getting the investment it deserves.