We work in an incredible industry filled with brilliant minds, the most exceptional talent and exceptionally passionate humans that have built the world’s most powerful brands.
But alongside this success, there’s a growing sense of unease about what has unravelled over the last decade, in the digital promise land:
- More reach would mean more impact
- More performance marketing would mean more sales
- More digital ad spend would mean more growth
Yet here we are: facing diminishing returns, misleading attribution models, and declining brand effectiveness.
Research from WARC’s Multiplier Effect, compiled by the brightest minds in our industry, is impossible to ignore: we have been misallocating investment, misinterpreting media impact, and failing to unlock the full potential of advertising effectiveness.
For the past 10 years, advertising has been dominated by data-rich, algorithm-driven platforms where success is measured in immediate returns, hyper-targeted efficiency, and short-term customer acquisition strategies.
Sustained compromises
We have entered an era where advertising is seen as a mere sales tool, a customer acquisition machine. In doing so, we have compromised creative, we have compromised our people and we have compromised long-term effectiveness.
We have become so focused on what “works today” that we’ve lost sight of what builds sustainable growth for tomorrow.
We are churning out rational, functional messages designed to drive short-term sales and have become obsessed with driving down costs – an obsession that is, ironically, costing our industry billions.
We are flooding the market with excessive amounts of advertising across the digital ecosystem, placing ads in environments and formats that may appear efficient on paper, but are failing to deliver real impact.
The result? A staggering amount of wasted spend, ineffective campaigns and ads that aren’t even being seen. What was meant to drive precision and performance has instead led to billions lost in invisible, ignored, and ineffective exposures.
But perhaps most concerning of all is that we have neglected our fundamental responsibility: to build brands that last, and that drive long-term, sustainable business growth.
Caught in a loop
I may be overly optimistic, and perhaps my algorithm is simply reinforcing that optimism, but I can’t ignore what I’m seeing: a major shift – possibly the biggest in the last 20 years.
The conversations are changing. The evidence is mounting, and thanks to the incredible work of giants in our industry, our understanding of effectiveness has never been clearer.
WARC’s Multiplier Effect report has flooded industry conversations and timelines – with good reason. The data is clear:
- Brands that over-invest in performance marketing see revenue declines of 20-50%.
- Shifting to a balanced brand + performance mix can increase total revenue by a median of 90%.
- 85% of advertising effectiveness comes from long-term investment—yet most brands prioritise short-term returns on ad spend.
This imbalance of prioritising performance has created what’s known as ‘The Doom Loop’:
- Brands chase quick wins with performance marketing.
- They optimise for immediate conversions while cutting brand-building spend.
- Growth stagnates as mental availability declines.
- They double down on performance, hoping for a different result.
And the cycle repeats.
True, performance marketing is critical to ensure we are driving sales and immediate returns from buyers in the category. It’s imperative that our communications and strategies are built on influencing that current demand (today’s buyers) by nudging consumers toward choosing your brand over competitors, and ensuring you are showing up at the moment of decision.
But here’s the catch: only between 5% – 15% of consumers are in the market (for any category) at any given time.
The vast majority, up to 85%, aren’t in the market yet. That’s why influencing future demand is where real growth comes from.
Over-prioritising performance marketing focuses only on the small pool of current demand, fighting over the same customers while neglecting future demand – #justaskNike.
Aiming for the win
The brands that win over time are those that advertise to the entire category, the heavy buyers, the light buyers and the future buyers, by:
- Creating strong mental associations, ensuring they are the first brand consumers think of when they eventually enter the market
- Invest in high-impact, memorable advertising that cuts through the clutter and stays with consumers long after they’ve seen it
- Maintain a broad-reach media presence, consistently exposing future and light buyers to the brand before they even realise they need it
We humans suffer from memory decay and forget things over time unless they are reinforced. This is why continuity in advertising is critical. To build and sustain mental availability, brands must continuously strengthen and refresh associations, ensuring they remain relevant and, most importantly, are easily recalled when the buying moment arrives.
This is why brand-building isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a necessity; without it, future demand dries up – and so does growth.
The attention gap
But how does this play out in a fragmented media environment overly cluttered with advertising messages for humans in a constant state of busy, with limited capacity to process things?
Our brains are also wired to bypass distractions, including advertising, to avoid cognitive overload. How do we cut through to get noticed and – most importantly – remembered?
For too long, marketers have worked under the assumption that reach = growth; that simply getting an ad in front of enough people will drive results. It does, theoretically – but here’s the harsh reality: 70% of “viewable” inventory gets no actual eyes on the ad. And there is very little correlation between time-in-view and actual attention. Not all reach is equal – just because an ad is served doesn’t mean it is seen.
Brand growth is determined by more than just being seen; it’s determined by memory. Attention lets info in; memory holds it – without the former that latter doesn’t exist
For long-term ad impact, the number of Active Attention Seconds matters: the more Active Attention Seconds are paid, the longer the brand stays in memory.
Memory retention doesn’t kick in until an ad is seen for about three seconds, after which on average every active attention second leads to an average three days in memory.
But here’s the problem: 85% of digital ads don’t even reach the minimum threshold of 2.5 seconds of active attention needed to have an impact.
This is why so much advertising fails: not because the creative isn’t strong or the targeting is off, but because ads are placed in overcrowded, fast-scrolling environments where they fade into the background.
When attention is fragmented, ads become nothing more than digital wallpaper – seen, but not processed. If they aren’t processed, they don’t stand a chance of registering in people’s minds – and when ads don’t make it into memory, neither do brands and their associations.
Without strong memory structures, there’s nothing to influence reasons to buy, today and tomorrow.
There is a real cost to Inattention. When brands stop advertising on high attentive volume platforms:
- Brand memories diminish
- Light buyers forget who you are and both sales and market share diminish
This is the reality many marketers are waking up to: an obsession with efficiency at the expense of effectiveness is costing brands billions in wasted spend.
For years, the industry has measured media as if all impressions are equal. They’re not. A low-cost impression that gets no attention is just wasted money – which is why the correlation between how much you spend and how much you grow is collapsing.
Closing the gaps
For too long, the conversation around brand-building vs performance, long-term vs short-term, reach vs attention has been framed as a choice: one or the other. In truth, these elements were never meant to operate in isolation, but to work together – strategically, creatively, and effectively.
- Brand-building fuels future growth
- Performance marketing captures existing demand
- Longer active attention ensures advertising is processed, remembered, and acted upon and allows for stronger memory encoding, ensuring brands come to mind when consumers are ready to buy
- Shorter bursts of attention work as well – especially to reinforce, remind, and nudge
When we close the gap, we don’t just improve marketing effectiveness, we build brands that build businesses – we have an enormous responsibility and role to play.
With thanks to the following brilliant minds and organisations – their rigorous research and relentless commitment helping us understand what truly makes advertising effective: The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, WARC, Peter Field, Les Binet, Mark Ritson, System1, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Amplified Intelligence, and Lumen Technologies.
Their insights continue to shape how we think, plan, and execute, ensuring that we build brands that last. Their dedication to uncovering what truly drives impact has given us the tools, the data, and the knowledge to do better. So let’s.
Michelle Randall is marketing and strategy director at Heed, where she has the privilege of driving key brand partnerships, client strategies and growth. An unashamedly passionate media and marketing enthusiast, she has worked, and been actively involved, in the media and advertising industry and associate bodies for almost 15 years. Randall was voted Media Owner Rising Star in the 2023 MOST Awards.
