At the recent Forbes CMO Summit in Aspen, Flowcode founder and CEO Tim Armstrong sat down with Forbes CEO Sherry Phillips to deliver a blunt assessment of what’s choking modern marketing: broken measurement, vanishing data, and a chaotic ad ecosystem that rewards vanity over value. Armstrong — a veteran of Google and AOL who now runs a company built to bridge the offline-to-online gap — made it clear marketers can’t keep blaming the tools; they need to demand better accountability and true return on investment.
One of Armstrong’s clearest warnings was about the desperate scramble to prove ROI, a problem marketers have wrestled with for years as finance teams lose faith in fuzzy metrics and black-box attribution models. That disconnect between marketing and the bottom line is not theoretical; industry surveys and insiders repeatedly point to elusive ROI and inadequate budgets as top obstacles, and Armstrong urged leaders to stop hiding behind impressions and start owning revenue outcomes.
Privacy changes and the collapse of reliable third-party identifiers have made that accountability even harder, which is why Armstrong argues brands must regain control of their own customer relationships and first-party data. Flowcode’s pitch — and Armstrong’s point onstage — is straightforward: when governments and gatekeepers meddle, it’s the private sector and entrepreneurs who innovate solutions that respect privacy while restoring measurability.
He also sounded a warning bell about the new technology everyone’s hyping: artificial intelligence. Armstrong told reporters and peers that AI has become the third pillar of media and advertising alongside internet and traditional media, and companies that don’t integrate it quickly will fall behind. That’s a call for action, not surrender — use AI to sharpen customer signals, speed decision-making, and stop wasting money on campaigns that don’t convert.
The product answer Armstrong brought to the stage was Flowcode 2, a QR-driven platform designed to turn real-world moments into measurable, direct customer connections so brands can finally track outcomes from a physical ad to a sale. It’s the kind of private-sector ingenuity conservatives should celebrate: entrepreneurs building tools to restore market discipline, not more heavy-handed regulation or centralized control of data.
Let’s be honest — too many marketing dollars are flushed down the drain chasing woke narratives, vanity metrics, and opaque platform reporting while small-business owners tighten the belt. Armstrong’s message was a rebuke to that waste: focus on performance, demand transparency, and back technologies that let honest businesses compete on results, not buzzwords.
If you care about American businesses and workers, you should welcome this conversation. Rather than surrendering more power to Big Tech or the regulatory state, marketers and entrepreneurs should double down on accountability, champion private innovation, and insist that every advertising dollar be tracked to a real outcome.
Hardworking Americans who run companies or sell goods deserve partners who deliver measurable value, not smoke and mirrors. Tim Armstrong’s remarks at the summit were a reminder that our economy runs on real transactions, and it’s time for marketers to act like stewards of capital rather than carnival barkers — embrace tools that work, cut the waste, and let the free market reward the companies that actually drive results.
