• Overinvesting in performance advertising reduces full revenue ROI by an average of 40%
• Shifting from performance-only to a mixed approach increases full revenue ROI by an average of 90%
• CMOs should allocate at least 30%, but usually between 40% and 60%, of budget to brand building
  Integration of brand and performance is key; siloed thinking undermines advertising returns
• Ground-breaking research for effective advertising in the US

WARC in partnership with Analytic Partners, BERA.ai, Prophet and System1 release new research in The Multiplier Effect – a CMO’s guide to brand-building in the performance era

January 28, 2025 – As marketing enters the next phase of change, one steered by algorithm-driven media and AI-generated creative, and faces even greater pressure to deliver results, ground-breaking research is presented in a new report, The Multiplier Effect – a CMO’s guide to brand building in the performance era, to help marketers better understand how to deliver high-impact advertising.

Based on insights and data from a first-of-its kind coalition of marketing effectiveness experts, the report – published by WARC in partnership with Analytic Partners, BERA.ai, Prophet and System1 – makes a data-driven case for effective advertising. Backed by evidence, it argues that many businesses are missing out on significant revenues and profits through an incomplete approach to advertising, and offers advice on how advertising can deliver the best possible returns by building equity for tomorrow while driving sales today.

David Tiltman, Chief Content Officer, WARC, says: “For this new research, we joined forces with other leading experts in the field of marketing effectiveness to set about answering two big questions: First, can we identify US-based evidence to prove how investment in advertising can be the most effective? And second, how can CMOs apply this evidence to their own initiatives in order to supercharge commercial impact for their businesses?

“The result is The Multiplier Effect, a ground-breaking report that demonstrates how the biggest returns come when marketers see brand equity as an accelerant of commercial performance. Although the research is US-focused, the findings are relevant to many marketers around the world.”

Key insights outlined in The Multiplier Effect study are:

The rise of the “doom loop”

Over the past decade, advertising investment has increasingly become focused on performance advertising due to the rise of digital-native businesses, a bumpy economy, a fragmented media landscape, and the related shifts in consumer media consumption.

Performance advertising holds out the promise of immediate returns and near-endless optimization. But misleading metrics and diminishing returns mean marketers in many organizations risk diminishing the impact of their advertising by over-investing in performance and entering the “doom loop” of slow growth and declining effectiveness.

Performance and brand advertising combined deliver greater returns

Research by Analytic Partners reveals the greatest payback comes when performance-led and equity-led advertising are both part of the mix. Moving from a performance-only to a mixed approach can deliver an improvement in total revenue ROI in the range of 25% to 100% – with the average uplift coming in at 90%. Moving to a performance-only approach from a mixed approach, by contrast, results in an average decline in ROI of 40%.

Equity building has an effect on people who are not yet in-market, increasing the chances that they will consider a brand when the time comes to make a purchase.

System1 found that 92.1% of strong equity-building ads with impactful creative performed well in the short-term, too. These ads created both demand among consumers who are ready to buy as well as building long-term equity.

Prophet’s survey of 300 leading marketers in North America further reinforced the need to do both performance and brand advertising in a holistic way. Its survey identified the qualities which set over-performing companies apart – and it was not their spending patterns, which remained largely even across the “winners” and “losers”. 90% of “winning” companies were at least somewhat integrated when it comes to connecting brand and demand.

Introducing The Multiplier Effect

The evidence shows that the key to unlocking the power of brand building is to move away from conceptualizing brand and performance as separate activities (brand + performance), and instead basing advertising efforts on the fundamental codependency between these tasks as part of an integrated growth strategy (brand x performance).

This leads to The Multiplier Effect

Equity-led advertising can help drive sales today as well as in the future. And performance advertising can reinforce the brand while operating as efficiently as possible.

How to harness The Multiplier Effect for success

Marketers wanting to consider the implications of the codependency between brand and performance on their advertising and benefit from The Multiplier Effect should consider some of the following best practices:

For budgeting purposes, CMOs should be allocating at least 30% to equity-driving ads, or the “brand baseline”, with 40% to 60% a typical “best practice” range.
Search investment will vary by brand and category, but, for most brands, spending more than 25% of budgets on search should be a red flag. This is called the “search ceiling”.
Avoid thinking in silos when campaign planning; instead, think of full-funnel creative platforms, where different types of assets reinforce each other. The ideal is to “go deep” by integrating all creative assets within a platform.
Performance-led techniques, such as promotions, should still tie back to the core brand idea.
Build a “measurement stack” that can identify a brand’s “baseline” revenues and the incremental impact of advertising beyond it.

Summing up, Ann Marie Kerwin, Americas Editor, WARC, said: “As we look to continue the project through further rounds of research, there are still a number of questions to answer, such as how does advertising combine and align with other forms of activity to build equity, how do advertisers optimize creativity and how do marketers present this argument to the CFO.

“Ultimately, we need a model for building brands that is fit for the future of marketing. Recognizing the Multiplier Effect is an important first step.”