Clients are notoriously divided on Brand and Performance marketing. Some are so divided that they have separate teams, budgets, and even agencies handling those respective remits.   

There are dozens of renown studies showing that you need both. One of the most quoted is the 2021 Nielsen Brand Resonance Report that found “increasing awareness and consideration by one point drives a 1% increase in future sales.

And in 2022, we discovered that increasing awareness and consideration by 1% can also decrease short-term cost per acquisition by 1%.”   

Most nod along, but when it comes to putting your money where your mouth is, the dollars slink back toward the bottom of the funnel.

This is true especially for mid-market clients where the choice is an either or. In the short and even mid-term, the tradeoff is pretty painful if you’re looking at it that way.  

So you want to prove it. Prove that investing in brand makes the whole machine work harder, gives people a reason to choose you more often, introduces incremental people that wouldn’t have considered your brand otherwise, etc. Easier said than done.

The Media Mix Model, if you have one, is slow, backward looking, and not typically very granular. And there is only so much credence you can give that partner-led Brand lift study that you got as added value. Impressions, reach, and frequency are not going to cut it. View-thru conversions are bloated at best.   

If Brand media’s impact were as clear as day, you could use a combination of those to make a nice argument, but the challenge is that there are bad impressions lurking around every corner. Placements that are not viewable, crowded, annoying, scammy, the list goes on. Or in some cases, the cost is just out of whack for the return you need. Even those that love Brand the most can acknowledge that not all Brand media is good media. Brand media and that hot new creative you just produced can only work if people see it.   

Enter Attention metrics. Most Attention partners -- like Adelaide or Billups, for example -- have created an Attention Score. This effectively shows you how likely a certain placement is to get someone’s attention. It analyzes the environment for things like genre, clutter, position, duration and more.

They can often take into account seasonality and day parting as well. You can correlate the score to various business outcomes like engagement, consideration, leads, sales, ROAS, etc.

It rides along with your media in (mostly) real time helping you navigate the wild, wild west of the Internet and guides your investment over time. Some refer to as a new age viewability metric, but even that description under sells the sophistication that sits behind it.   

In practice, you’ll need to consider some of the operational elements on how you want to track, receive, and optimize off the data. There are several options and integrations, including "off the shelf" pre-bid segments that can make this type of measurement a little more accessible.   

Perfection is the enemy of good in this age-old battle. There’s still modeling, algorithm training, and testing involved here, but you can start to speak the same language as your performance counterparts (or your CFO, CEO, COO).

You can start to compare channels and partners in a way that’s more consistent and objective. You can start to navigate the myriad of brand investments with the same rigor and discipline that a performance marketing expert would expect.   

If you can get more attention, all tides rise.