It seems obvious looking back: of course, we need to maintain brand-building strategies while implementing performance strategies. So why have marketers been trading brand marketing for performance strategy for years? Mike Menkes, Senior VP at Analytic Partners, delivered this jolt of reality in his Ad Week session. He presented research from The Multiplier Effect, a collaborative study published by Analytic Partners, WARC and other industry leaders.
The Performance Marketing Addiction
The marketing industry has a problem: We're addicted to performance metrics that tell a simple story, even when it's not the whole truth. Our siloed metrics and attribution models are fundamentally misleading us about what actually drives results.
The 30% Search Secret
Here's a game-changing statistic from Analytic Partners' ROI Genome research: 30% of search clicks are due to other forms of marketing. Nearly one-third of the clicks you're attributing to paid search actually result from your brand-building efforts across other channels.
Brand × Performance = Better Together
This is where their equation Brand x Performance = Better Together comes into play. The WARC Multiplier Effect research proves this formula with data:
- Brands integrating brand-building and performance advertising see +90% ROI
- Moving to performance-only creates a -40% ROI decrease (the "performance penalty")
- Brand equity strategies are actually more effective in the short term than performance marketing alone
The conventional wisdom is backward. Performance marketing doesn't work effectively without brand-building.
Where Brands Are Under-Investing
While budgets continue shifting toward search and retail media, this trend is being driven by misleading metrics. Search and retail media appear to be driving significant sales in attribution reports, but these metrics fail to account for the critical questions: Why are people searching in the first place? What's driving them to convert? Why are they clicking?
Menkes' team analyzed the ROI Genome to identify where brands are systematically under-investing. The findings reveal significant opportunities for growth in channels that deliver both short-term success and long-term value:
- Social Platforms (72%) of brands would improve short-term performance with increased investment
- Streaming & CTV (71%)
- Digital Audio Platforms (64%)
- Influencers (57%)
The data tells a clear story: These upper-funnel channels aren't just brand-building exercises — they actively drive short-term performance while simultaneously building long-term equity. The chart of long-term versus short-term ROI by marketing channel shows that streaming video, digital video and traditional TV deliver strong performance in both timeframes. Yet, brands continue to under-allocate to these channels in favor of search and retail media.
The reason? Attribution models give credit to the last click, not to the channels that created the awareness and intent that led someone to search for your brand in the first place. This reveals a critical flaw: ROAS and last-click attribution don't account for the influence of other marketing activities. They systematically undervalue brand-building while overvaluing bottom-funnel tactics.
The 30% Brand Baseline & 25% Search Ceiling
Brands with the highest media ROIs invest at least 30% of their budget into brand equity marketing — some go as high as 40-50%.
The La-Z-Boy case study demonstrates this perfectly. They increased revenue 22% (FY22-23) and another 5% (FY24-25), even with budget cuts, by maintaining their brand strategy and leveraging the brand equity they had built previously. These gains were part of a holistic strategy beyond just brand marketing. A strategy focused on owned assets, an omnichannel approach, revamped physical store locations and an expanded footprint and partner network. Critically, each of these elements had to be measured separately to avoid overstating or understating the true role of marketing in driving growth.
Meanwhile, spending more than 25% of the budget on search should be a red flag. More than half of brands overspend on search relative to its impact, capturing existing demand rather than creating new demand. According to Analytics Partners, “last click attribution can overestimate the paid search impact by 190%, and underestimate equity-led TV advertising by 90%.”
Four Principles for Success
Menkes outlined these critical principles:
- Measurement Matters - Use sophisticated systems that capture delayed effects and cross-channel influence, not just real-time clicks
- Brand × Performance = Better Together - This is a multiplicative relationship, not either/or
- The 30% Brand Baseline - Minimum 30%+ budget to brand equity for optimal performance
- The 25% Search Ceiling - More than 25% on search indicates over-reliance on capturing existing demand
The Path Forward
The marketing landscape is changing rapidly —TV is declining, retail media is exploding, channels are multiplying. The temptation to retreat into simple performance metrics grows stronger, but that's exactly the wrong response.
The path forward means:
- Investing in sophisticated measurement
- Allocating at least 30% to brand-building
- Understanding that brand doesn't just support performance marketing—it multiplies it
Brand × Performance = Better Together. Brands that get the mix right see +90% ROI increases.
It's time to break the performance marketing addiction and embrace the multiplier effect.
Based on “How to Perform in a Performance Era with Brand” presentation and WARC Multiplier Effect research study by Mike Menkes, Senior VP at Analytic Partners, at Ad Week.
