In the Philippines, a state of national energy emergency has been declared, alongside fuel restrictions and a four-day working week in parts of government. Sri Lanka has reintroduced QR-based fuel rationing. Japan has begun releasing national oil stockpiles. South Korea has mobilised a cross-government economic response. China has stepped in to stabilise domestic fuel prices. Australia is actively preparing for supply disruption through coordinated national planning.

These are not edge cases, they are signals. And for marketers, they expose a structural weakness in how organisations plan and take action in uncertain conditions.

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The illusion of a stable plan

Most marketing plans are built as if the future will resemble the recent past, with minor adjustments. Assumptions are made about demand, pricing, media performance and competitive behaviour. These assumptions are reasonable at the point of planning but they are inherently fragile.

They rely on conditions that no longer hold. When energy costs rise sharply, distribution becomes more expensive. When inflation increases, pricing decisions change and consumer purchasing power shifts. When governments intervene, entire categories can behave differently overnight. But the plan? That rarely adapts so just become less accurate over time.

Most organisations continue to measure performance against that original plan. Variance is treated as underperformance. Budgets are adjusted reactively. Marketing is asked to explain outcomes that were shaped by forces far beyond its control. This is not a measurement issue, it is a planning issue built on the assumption that outcomes can be predicted with precision.

What marketers can and cannot influence

The first step towards more resilient marketing is clarity. Marketing controls creative, media investment, targeting and timing. It can influence demand and it can shape preference but it does not control fuel prices, supply chain disruption, interest rates or government policy.

Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome demonstrate that marketing contributes between 10% and 50% of business performance depending on the context, with the majority of growth driven by non-marketing factors such as macroeconomic conditions, availability and broader consumer trends .

That reality has always existed. What has changed is the scale and speed at which those external factors are moving, meaning a single marketing plan is no longer enough.

From prediction to scenario planning

This is where modelling takes on a different role. Historically, modelling has been used to explain past performance i.e. which channels worked, what drove ROI and how campaigns performed. That remains useful but is no longer sufficient.

In volatile conditions, the real value of modelling lies in its ability to simulate multiple scenarios. Not to predict a single outcome, but to quantify a range of possible outcomes and the trade-offs between them so...

• What happens if fuel prices rise another 15% and distribution costs follow?

• What happens if consumer demand softens in metropolitan areas but holds in regional markets?

• What happens if a competitor responds to cost pressure by reducing price or increasing promotional intensity?

It would be great to imagine these as theoretical questions but they’re not, they’re active dynamics across APAC markets right now.

The purpose of modelling is to bring structure to that uncertainty and allow marketers to explore the consequences of different conditions before they fully materialise so that they can plan responses accordingly. You cannot forecast what will happen in this environment, but you can prepare for what could happen.

How to build a dynamic planning capability

This, as ever, requires a shift in thinking and process.

1. First, planning needs to move beyond a single view of the future. The annual plan cannot remain static while the environment changes around it, but nor should it require rebuilding every time conditions shift. Instead, organisations need a stable modelling foundation that allows different scenarios to be explored as conditions evolve, applying consistent logic to new situations rather than reworking the model itself. The focus shifts from trying to get the plan right, to understanding how the business will respond under different conditions; fuel costs, pricing pressure, demand shifts or supply constraints. This is not about constant change, but about being prepared; using scenario planning both in periods of volatility and as a way to de-risk decisions before they are made.

2. Second, those external forces need to be built into decision-making, not just acknowledged. Too often, factors such as inflation, competitor activity or supply constraints are recognised in discussion but remain disconnected from how plans are actually evaluated. In the current environment, that gap becomes a risk. These variables are not peripheral, they shape performance. A robust model brings them into the core of scenario planning, allowing organisations to understand not just what is happening, but how those forces interact with marketing and commercial decisions.

3. Third, scenario planning needs to move from theory into action. It is not enough to recognise uncertainty or model external forces; organisations need to define how they would respond under different conditions. Rather than asking what will happen, the focus shifts to what could happen, and what decisions follow. This creates a set of pre-considered responses that can be activated quickly as conditions evolve, reducing reaction time and allowing marketing to operate with greater control in uncertain environments.

Our approach is to begin with early briefing, followed by modelling multiple scenarios before plans are finalised. Those scenarios are compared, refined, and then revisited as conditions evolve. This is not done in isolation, but informed by a broad base of cross-market evidence, built over time and tested through periods of disruption. During COVID, for example, scenario modelling was informed by patterns emerging across different markets, allowing responses to be shaped by what was already unfolding elsewhere, not just what had already happened locally.

This is a fundamentally different discipline from traditional forecasting. It accepts that precision is not possible and instead prioritises preparedness, using data, experience and structured modelling to understand how different conditions are likely to play out, and how the business should respond.

Connecting marketing to the wider business

There is an additional implication; as scenario planning become more dynamic, the boundary between marketing and the rest of the business becomes less defined. Pricing decisions affect demand. Distribution constraints affect availability. Macroeconomic conditions affect both. Marketing interacts with all of these factors, but cannot be evaluated in isolation from them. This is why a commercial analytics lens is increasingly important.

Rather than focusing solely on marketing inputs and outputs, commercial analytics integrates marketing with financial, operational and external data. It recognises that performance is the result of interaction between multiple drivers. This allows for more meaningful questions to be asked; not simply which channel delivered the highest return, but how marketing is amplifying or offsetting broader market forces. Not just what happened, but what is likely to happen under different conditions.

This is where the value of partnership becomes critical. Scenario planning is only as strong as the data, the model, and the expertise behind it. With a consistent modelling approach grounded in long-term, cross-category evidence, organisations are able to apply proven intelligence to new scenarios as they arise, rather than rebuild their understanding each time conditions change. The result is not a prediction of what will happen, but a clearer view of how the business is likely to respond under different conditions, and which levers to pull as those conditions emerge.

Confidence in uncertain conditions

For CMOs, this shift has a practical benefit. It changes the nature of conversations with leadership.

In a static planning model, deviations from the marketing plan are often difficult to explain. In a dynamic model, those deviations are anticipated, quantified and contextualised, which builds credibility. It demonstrates that marketing understands the commercial environment, not just its own activity within it. And it provides a clearer link between marketing decisions and business outcomes, even when those outcomes are influenced by external factors. In a period of heightened scrutiny on budgets and performance, that clarity matters.

A different approach to the future

For good or ill, volatility is no longer an exception. It is becoming a defining feature of the operating environment. Geopolitical instability, economic pressure and shifting consumer behaviour are not temporary disruptions. They are ongoing conditions that require a different approach to planning.

For marketers, this means letting go of the idea that the future can be forecast once and then executed against. The future cannot be predicted with confidence in this environment, but it can be actively managed through scenario planning.

The real risk is not that predictions might be wrong, but that they remain unchanged after everything else has moved.

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If your plans are still built on a fixed view of the future, it may be time to start modelling what happens when that future changes.

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This was not a quick poll. Each interview ran for 45 minutes, supported by a detailed survey exploring how investment decisions are actually made in 2026.

The answers were deeply revealing because, despite all the tools, dashboards and data available today, the way most organisations make budget decisions still isn’t as advanced as we might like to think.

We’ve broken this down into the five forces shaping how marketing investment decisions are really being made right now and what to do about them.

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Insight #1: Data remains a limiter

For most large advertisers, data is still the biggest barrier to making confident decisions. Fragmentation, privacy constraints and difficulty integrating external data sources continue to slow teams down.

The issue, it seems, is no longer access to data. It is the ability to connect, interpret and apply it in a way that drives action. The practical implication for CMOs is clear, they don’t need more data, rather, usable, connected, decision-ready data.

Our take? Organisations that adopt privacy-safe, model-based methods can overcome many obstacles that have stalled progress. Approaches that integrate data across time and geography, rather than people and devices, are inherently more resilient to fragmentation and privacy constraints. Together, these methods create a more stable, durable, and holistic foundation for confident decisioning.

Insight #2: External factors are the critical gap

It is not just about marketing performance data, the bigger issue is what sits outside of it. External factors such as pricing, distribution, competitive activity and macroeconomic conditions are still poorly integrated into decision-making. That matters because marketing does not operate in isolation (and it never has), yet most measurement systems still treat it as if it does.

Broader ROI Genome analysis shows that marketing typically drives only 10% to 50% of business outcomes directly, with the rest influenced by factors beyond marketing. If your measurement system only captures marketing activity, you are only seeing, and optimising, part of the picture.

Analytics gain a great deal more credibility when they reflect the environment in which decisions are made. Models that incorporate external context allow leaders to explore what-if scenarios with shifts to that context and forecast new expected outcomes

Insight #3: Marketing budget decisions are the least data-driven

First the good news: very few leaders rely purely on gut these days - only about 3%. Most blend data with experience, and the remainder depend on the data (shown below). However, marketing leaders are far less likely to take a highly data-driven approach (22%) compared to their Finance (45%) and Analytics (36%) counterparts. This gap shows that even with widespread analytic tools, many teams still default to judgment over data when setting budgets.

There is plenty of evidence that organisations whose decisions are rooted in robust measurement consistently outperform their industry peers so why is marketing lagging? We believe marketing leaders have the greatest opportunity to raise their own decisions rigour by lifting budget allocation from the least data-driven strategic area to one that performs at least on par with other departments.

Insight 4: Marketing Mix Modeling is the most-cited source of truth

I’ll hand over to one of our participants to illustrate this point:

Couldn’t have said it better myself!

Insight 5: Marketing Mix Modeling must match the speed and volatility of your business.

Among organisations using MMM, or it’s big brother Commercial Analytics, 82% receive new or updated results at least quarterly. This aligns with the reality that major advertisers revisit budgets and reallocate spend multiple times per year as conditions change.

When measurement lags behind the business, it stops being a decision tool and becomes a historical record. MMM is a powerful test-and-learn engine that enables opportunities identified in one quarter to be implemented in the next and measured for impact. That repeatable reinforcement cycle builds executive confidence in the outputs and, over time, accelerates the shift from “balanced” decisions to the data-first decisions that drive predictable growth.

What does this mean for CMOs?

Taken together, these findings point to a shift in how marketing needs to operate, using reporting as a live decisioning tool rather than an historical artifact. And it’s not about who has the most data but who can:

• Integrate marketing with the wider business system

• Make confident decisions despite imperfect data

• Balance short-term performance with long-term growth

• Move at speed without losing rigour

• Align Marketing, Finance and Analytics around a shared view of how growth is created.

Because that alignment is what will turn insights into action. Want to know more? This article only scratches the surface of what 455 senior marketers, finance leaders and analysts shared with us. If you want to understand how leading organisations are evolving their approach to marketing investment and what it means for your own decision-making, the full report is well worth your time.

👉 Download the full report: Five Forces Shaping Marketing Budget Decisions in 2026

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The instinctive response is predictable. Cut “non-essential” spend. Push harder into performance. Optimise the mix. But here’s the thing: when budgets shrink, the wrong cuts quietly damage the very growth you’re trying to protect. The question isn’t how to survive shrinking budgets so much as how to reallocate them intelligently.

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The First Mistake: Chasing Efficiency at the Expense of Effectiveness

When money tightens, performance marketing looks safe. It converts. It reports weekly. It feels accountable. Yet ROI Genome® evidence consistently shows that brands leaning too heavily into short-term activation suffer a “performance penalty” over time. Revenue returns can decline by 20 to 40 percent when investment skews too far away from brand building. Why? Because performance channels harvest existing demand. They do not create it.

In flat or volatile markets, you can only squeeze so much from the same in-market audience before costs rise and returns plateau. Shrinking budgets demand sharper allocation, not narrower thinking.

The Multiplier Effect: Why Brand Works Harder Under Pressure

One of the most persistent myths in constrained environments is that brand is a luxury because the data says otherwise. Campaigns that balance brand and performance consistently deliver stronger total revenue returns than performance-only approaches. Strong brands convert more efficiently. They reduce price sensitivity and amplify media effectiveness

In practical terms, allocating at least 30 percent of media spend to equity-building activity provides the foundation for sustainable performance. Below that threshold, the multiplier weakens, which is exactly what we’re seeing play out across Australian FMCG brands right now.

Several have shifted to consistently back their Masterbrand on TV and Out-of-Home (OOH), while allowing individual product campaigns and launches to live primarily online. The logic is simple: Masterbrand media drives efficient reach, and that reach creates a halo effect across every smaller digital campaign.

One of our FMCG clients is a perfect example. After shifting to an always-on Masterbrand strategy offline, their product-level digital ROI did not dip, even without product-specific offline support. The Masterbrand campaign was already building demand for the whole portfolio.

What the Data Says About Channel Mix

ROI Genome® reinforces this structurally. The most efficient combination for many FMCG brands is a Masterbrand campaign across TV and OOH supporting digital product-level activity online. TV and OOH build mental availability at scale. Digital converts that demand.

However, brands operating with budgets in the AUD $1–2 million range often assume TV is essential to achieve this balance. That isn’t always the case.

Our data shows that OOH combined with digital can outperform TV + digital at certain budget levels, particularly when it allows brands to stay in market longer. OOH provides sustained reach at lower cost and strengthens digital performance through cross-channel reinforcement.

Continuity Compounds ROI

Another silent ROI killer in shrinking budget cycles is blank space. Our models consistently recommend leaving no more than 12 weeks between campaign bursts. Beyond that, cumulative impact erodes and you effectively have to “rebuild” brand momentum each time you return to market.

In practice, continuity doesn’t have to rely on a single channel. A powerful approach we increasingly see is OOH combined with video platforms such as YouTube, BVOD and SVOD. OOH maintains consistent physical presence and reach, while online video sustains emotional storytelling and reinforces brand memory. Together, they allow brands to remain visible between major campaign bursts without the cost of continuous TV.

When TV Isn’t Viable, OOH Can Carry the Load

Where budgets don’t stretch to TV, OOH can do more heavy lifting than many assume. With sufficient investment, OOH can deliver up to 80 percent of the ROI that would be achieved if TV were included in the mix. It drives efficient offline reach and reinforces digital channels to sustain performance.

Channel Synergy Matters More Than Ever

When budgets shrink, many marketers instinctively concentrate spend into one or two channels, typically search or social. It feels efficient but it often limits growth. What the data shows is that campaigns operating across multiple complementary channels consistently outperform those concentrated in just one or two. Each additional channel expands reach and reinforces brand memory, which improves the effectiveness of the whole system.

ROI by Number of Channels – Minimum 3 Recommended

The key is not spreading tiny budgets everywhere. It is layering channels strategically at meaningful levels of investment so they reinforce each other. For example, pairing OOH with digital video and online performance channels can deliver both reach and conversion, even when TV isn’t viable.

The Real Opportunity

Budget pressure is uncomfortable but it is also clarifying. It forces sharper prioritisation and challenges lazy allocation. It rewards leaders who can translate marketing decisions into commercial outcomes because shrinking budgets don’t necessarily mean shrinking ambition - they just mean better decisions.

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If budget pressure is intensifying in your organisation, the most important shift you can make is aligning marketing decisions with finance language. Our downloadable guide, “How to Get Your CFO to Say Yes”, outlines the commercial frameworks, scenario planning approaches and ROI arguments that resonate with finance leaders.

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Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome® shows that marketing typically explains 10–50% of business outcomes, depending on category and conditions. The rest comes from pricing, distribution, timing, operations, competitive dynamics and macro forces. In other words, over half of growth lives beyond the media plan.

This is not an argument to invest less in marketing. It is an argument to measure and manage growth differently.

From reporting performance to engineering growth

The strongest organisations are shifting away from viewing measurement as a reporting function and towards using it as a decisioning system.

The ROI Genome® Unlock Growth Insights reports frames this shift in three stages: Establish, Evolve and Operationalise.

Together, they describe how CMOs can move from explaining yesterday’s results to shaping tomorrow’s growth. Let’s go!

Establish: Turn data into expertise, not dashboards

The first trap many organisations fall into is mistaking data volume for insight.

Brands are capturing more data than ever, yet leaders often feel less confident making decisions. The reason is simple. Data is rarely connected back to the business questions that matter most.

ROI Genome® shows that high-performing organisations start by anchoring measurement to commercial goals, not channels or metrics. They focus on the questions that move the business, then assemble only the data needed to answer them. This also requires a mindset shift from measurement as report card, to measurement as planning tool.

More than 60% of brands find that their highest-performing channel today will not be their top performer in the next period. Organisations that use analytics for forward-looking scenario planning unlock $50–100 million in incremental growth without increasing spend.

Just as importantly, the most effective CMOs bring finance into this process early. When CFOs are actively involved, organisations identify significantly more growth opportunities. When they are not, 20–80% of potential upside is lost.

Growth does not happen in silos, measurement shouldn’t either.

Evolve: Balance short-term returns with long-term value

If there is one insight that consistently challenges short-term thinking, it is this: marketing impact is not immediate.

ROI Genome® analysis shows that two-thirds of short-term impact occurs after the week of execution, and that 10–50% of media impact is realised in the long term, well beyond typical attribution windows.

This matters because many optimisation decisions are still being made using last-click or short-term ROAS metrics. These approaches systematically over-credit highly clickable channels and under-value brand-building activity. In fact, last-click attribution can overstate the role of some channels by 2–10x, leading to material misallocation of budget. Brand investment is where this distortion becomes most damaging.

ROI Genome® shows that brands with the highest media ROI consistently allocate at least 30% of their budget to brand equity-building activity. When organisations move from a performance-only strategy to a balanced brand and performance approach, they see a median 90% increase in revenue ROI. Move back the other way, and returns fall by around 40%. Not to sound like a stuck record but, brand is not a soft metric it is a multiplier.

The same pattern appears in creative quality and timing. Strong creative outperforms weak creative by 2.5x, and brands that align spend with periods of natural demand achieve 30% higher ROI.

Operationalise: Make insight usable, not theoretical

Insight only creates value when it changes behaviour.

The final step is embedding analytics into everyday decision-making, so that insight travels beyond the marketing team and into the organisation.

This is where many programmes stall. ROI Genome® shows that businesses with strong organisational adoption of analytics grow five times faster than those where insight remains trapped in reports and presentations .

The most effective organisations do three things consistently.

1. First, they move beyond last-click thinking. For every dollar allocated based on siloed ROAS or attribution metrics, 35 cents of opportunity is lost. Holistic measurement surfaces the true drivers of growth and protects investment from false efficiencies .

2. Second, they use scenario planning as a core management discipline. Brands that adopt consistent scenario planning through Commercial Analytics see 50% ROI growth over five years, with top performers doubling ROI in as little as four to six years .

3. Third, they commit to the long game. ROI Genome® shows that brands that maintained or increased media investment during economic downturns achieved 17% incremental sales growth, alongside stronger ROI and brand health. Short-term wins matter, but sustained growth is built over time .

Growth is a leadership choice

The real lesson from ROI Genome® is not about channels, tactics or tools. It is about leadership.

Growth comes from making better decisions, faster, with a clearer understanding of how marketing, pricing, operations and external forces interact.

CMOs who embrace this broader commercial view stop defending budgets and start shaping strategy. They move from reporting performance to engineering growth. And in an increasingly complex, volatile market, that shift may be the most valuable one of all.

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1. Twenty Channels and Counting

Chinese brands typically run campaigns across more than twenty touchpoints, far more than marketers in other markets attempt. According to Analytic Partners data analyses, this fragmentation isn’t inefficiency; it’s the reality of how consumers move. From livestream discovery to e-commerce conversion, the buyer journey is anything but linear. Each platform plays a distinct role, as our VP and Asia Lead Jun Cao explains:

“Douyin offers full funnel functionality from awareness building and entertainment to conversion but it also creates a halo effect on other, more conversion-focused channels like Tmall and JD.com. Little Red Book fuels peer influence and product discovery. WeChat communities nurture loyalty and repeat purchase.”

2. Why Channel Synergy Matters

Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome® has long shown that marketing channels don’t operate in isolation. When combined, they can lift ROI by as much as 50 percent compared to single-channel strategies. The same holds true, perhaps even more so, in China.

Investing in one channel often boosts returns elsewhere. For example, campaigns that include Douyin not only perform strongly within the platform but also enhance sales on Tmall and JD. Video content drives search activity, encourages word-of-mouth and amplifies social mentions. In other words, the “halo effect” is real; when media channels complement one another, their combined impact far exceeds the sum of their parts.

3. Case in Point: The Douyin Effect

Analytic Partners’ modelling in China frequently shows that investment on Douyin amplifies performance on e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, with measurable lifts in both traffic and conversion. Our Shanghai-based modelling team also observes consistent spillover effects, where a meaningful share of sales attributed to Douyin exposure actually converts on other platforms. In these cases, between 10 and 40 percent of Douyin-driven media sales materialise elsewhere across the e-commerce ecosystem. While the exact uplift varies by brand, the halo effect between short video engagement and platform conversion is one of the strongest and most reliable dynamics we see in the market according to Jun:

“We frequently see this pattern in China. For example, brands that rely primarily on search and display often unlock significantly higher ROI when short-video exposure is added to the mix. In many cases, campaign effectiveness rises by 20 to 40 percent, with clear halo effects across search activity, word of mouth and direct-to-consumer traffic following bursts of Douyin activity.”

4. Beyond Paid: The Role of Owned and Earned

Chinese consumers don’t distinguish between paid, owned and earned touchpoints. A WeChat mini-program or a Little Red Book review can have as much influence as a paid ad. According to our ROI Genome® insights, TV and online video can double their impact once indirect effects, such as search uplift and word-of-mouth, are included.

For Chinese marketers, that interconnection is even tighter. A livestream sale doesn’t just move inventory; it creates content that fans repost, dissect and remix across social media. The echo continues long after the “Buy Now” button is clicked.

5. What This Means for Global Marketers

Marketers outside China often underestimate the pay-to-play dynamics of its digital ecosystem. Each platform demands investment to unlock reach and visibility, but those investments don’t live in silos. The real return comes from orchestration - aligning content, timing and targeting so that one channel amplifies another.

In practical terms:

• Map interactions, not channels. Understand how exposure in one platform influences behaviour in another.

• Balance brand and performance. ROI Genome® data shows that campaigns blending awareness and activation deliver up to 90% higher ROI than performance-only approaches.

• Measure synergies, not just clicks. Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) and unified measurement frameworks can quantify cross-platform effects and reveal the hidden multipliers traditional attribution misses.

6. The Future is Omnichannel AND Algorithmic

As e-commerce, social, and entertainment continue to blur, the boundaries between channels will disappear. Algorithms already optimise cross-platform exposure in real time, rewarding brands that deliver consistent creative and messaging. Those who treat each platform as a standalone buy will simply be outplayed by those who plan for synergy. Jun’s advice?

“In China, it’s not just about being everywhere, it’s about making every channel work together. The brands winning today aren’t spending more; they’re spending smarter, recognising that synergy is the secret ingredient in their ROI recipe.”

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The truth, however, is that most brands aren’t actually at that ceiling. Our data shows that 98.7% of brands in Australia and New Zealand still have headroom before reaching diminishing returns on video. The conversation about saturation is loud - particularly in finance rooms - but in practice, very few advertisers have genuinely maxed out their video investment.

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The problem is, marketing ROI curves don’t behave like a failing investment. They behave more like a gym program. Your first few weeks deliver obvious gains. Then progress slows. Not because the gym “stopped working”, but because you’ve moved from “new stimulus” to “maintenance and compounding”. If you quit the moment results plateau, you don’t preserve the gains - you gradually give them back.

That’s why Stu Carr’s recent Mi3 piece landed. His central point is that what looks like “efficiency” at low frequency is often just the benefit of earlier work still paying off. As he puts it: “A frequency of one can work. But it works best when it sits on top of prior effort.”

We agree with that logic. But there’s an even bigger commercial tripwire sitting underneath it and it shows up every time someone says: “We’re hitting diminishing returns, so we should cap spend.”

Because declining ROI does not automatically mean declining value. It can mean the channel is still the best option you’ve got and cutting it could reduce total campaign ROI. More importantly, it often reflects confusion between how much you should spend (your total budget) and how you should allocate that spend. These are not the same decision and mixing them up is where most mistakes happen.

Why this gets so confusing in streaming and digital video

In the linear TV era, frequency wasn’t something you neatly engineered. It was something that happened as a by-product of scale. You bought reach, and repetition arrived whether you liked it or not. Streaming and digital video changed the rules: you can cap frequency, throttle delivery, and flatten exposure. That feels “disciplined”… right up until you realise you might be flattening the very mechanism that built memory in the first place.

And memory, like fitness, is built through consistency.

In our norms across Australia and New Zealand, one of the cleanest patterns is this: going from under 10 weeks on air to 20–30+ weeks can increase ROI by up to 60%. That’s not a rounding error. That’s the difference between “we showed up” and “we stayed in the market long enough to become easy to remember.”

Burst campaigns are expensive because they keep restarting the job. Each time you go dark, you give up momentum and have to rebuild it. Continuity works differently. It reinforces what people already know rather than reintroducing yourself from scratch. Over time, that reinforcement compounds. You’re not just buying impressions but strengthening memory structures that make future advertising work harder for you.

The “frequency of 1” idea isn’t wrong, it’s just incomplete

Marketers love rules of thumb because rules feel safe. “Frequency of one” is one of those rules. As Paul Sinkinson, Managing Director Asia & Australia Analytic Partners explains, we never truly operated at a frequency of one on linear TV because we couldn’t cap it.

“The actual exposure levels were higher than the planning assumption and that’s part of why it worked.”

When we look at what “optimal” actually looks like in YouTube it’s not 1. Our modelling indicates 2.7 exposures per week is the ROI-maximising point for maintenance activity, and 3.8 exposures per week for launch activity.

Now here’s where it gets practical for a senior marketer: even those “optimal” points can be misleading if you apply them as a blunt instrument. Why? Because launches aren’t just about short-term ROI, they’re about building the structure that makes later efficiency possible. If you judge a launch like it’s a maintenance campaign, you’ll almost always under-invest early and then wonder why you can’t “optimise” your way to growth later.

Reach still matters but it has a sweet spot

The other thing digital video planning tends to do is underplay reach because it feels abstract compared to conversion metrics. But reach is the thing that stops you repeatedly preaching to the same choir.

In our norms, the highest ROI for reach still sits around 50–75% of the total audience - there’s a tipping point where it becomes less efficient, but the peak is still firmly in that middle band.

You don’t need to reach everyone. But you do need sufficient scale for memory to compound, particularly in a world where broadcast reach no longer happens by default.

Here’s the real punchline: “diminishing returns” is rare and often misread

Once you accept that you likely need more continuity, more reach, and more frequency than the old heuristics suggest, the immediate fear is: “Are we already spending too much?”

As noted earlier, only 1.3% of brands in Australia and New Zealand are genuinely at diminishing returns. That context matters here, because it reframes the anxiety - most advertisers aren’t pushing too far; they’re still operating below their potential ceiling.

But there’s a more important nuance hiding behind the headline. Digital video is often still the strongest ROI performer in the channel set, which means even when its ROI declines, it can remain the best contributor to total campaign ROI.

Paul highlights the commercial nuance clearly:

“We’ve seen scenarios where YouTube ROI could decline by 42% and still remain the strongest performer in the mix. It could halve and still outperform linear TV. So reacting to a softening curve without comparing alternatives can reduce total campaign ROI.”

This is the moment where many teams make the wrong call. They see a channel’s ROI falling and assume spend should be capped. But if the channel is still outperforming the alternatives, reducing it can lower overall ROI.

This is the move from channel-level optimisation to mix-level optimisation. And it’s where senior marketers earn their keep because it requires judgement, not dashboards.

Efficiency vs Effectiveness: The CTV Confusion

There’s a debate that keeps surfacing in video planning — and it usually goes something like this: YouTube is the efficiency play, BVOD is the effectiveness play. The logic sounds reasonable. BVOD delivers stronger impact per exposure, so surely it must be driving more growth? Not quite. And the math is worth understanding, because this distinction costs brands real money.

We often hear that YouTube is the efficiency play, while BVOD is the effectiveness play. The logic is simple: BVOD delivers stronger impact per exposure, so it must be driving more growth.

That is where people get it wrong. A stronger result per ad does not automatically mean a stronger overall outcome. If you are working with a fixed budget, the question is not which ad performs better in isolation. The question is: which option generates the most total sales for the money you have.

That is what ROI measures. ROI tells you how much additional return you get for every dollar spent. So the higher the ROI, the more total sales you generate from the same budget. This is where the confusion between efficiency and effectiveness breaks down. Higher efficiency does not mean lower volume. It means more output for the same cost.

So if YouTube delivers higher ROI than BVOD or other CTV options, allocating more budget to YouTube is not just an efficiency play. It is the decision that drives the most total growth.

The mistake is thinking you can improve ROI by spending less. Yes, the average may improve. But if you are measuring incremental impact properly, total sales fall as well. You have not improved performance. You have reduced it. ROI is not about making the numbers look better. It is about getting the most out of the budget you have.

This is what we see in practice. YouTube ads on CTV deliver higher response than any other device — and higher ROI than Linear TV (which sits at 39% of YouTube’s ROI) and higher than BVOD and SVOD (at 76%). Critically, YouTube is also scalable, so that higher return can be deployed across a larger share of budget.

Even where BVOD delivers strong impact per exposure, YouTube’s combination of higher ROI and scale makes it the stronger driver of total growth. So the next time someone frames this as efficiency versus effectiveness — push back. The real question is always: which option grows the business most, with the budget you actually have?

The bigger opportunity isn’t reallocation but unlocking more value inside the channel

If your ROI curve is bending, you don’t always need to substitute the channel. Often you need to change how you’re using it e.g. format, sequencing, creative fit, and goal alignment. Two examples from recent YouTube performance analysis illustrate the point:

1. Skippable is more efficient for maintenance campaigns, but for launch campaigns (new campaigns) non-skippable lifts 9% higher than skippable.

2. Vertical video is not just a “nice to test” anymore. Across the client base, Shorts is averaging +19% higher ROI and 55% higher response than any other vertical video and the fun (and slightly annoying) part? Creative is rarely optimised for Shorts right now, which suggests the performance ceiling may not be anywhere close to being reached.

What this means for CMOs

If you’re leading marketing across APAC or Australia right now, you’re balancing tighter budgets, fragmented screens and increased scrutiny. In that environment, simplistic rules feel safe: cap when ROI dips, flatten frequency, rotate budget but the more commercially accurate approach is this:

• Treat diminishing returns as a portfolio question, not a panic signal.

• Ask whether a channel still outperforms alternatives, even if its ROI has softened.

• Optimise formats, sequencing and exposure levels before reallocating spend.

• Recognise that continuity and scale are structural growth drivers, not “nice to have” extras.

Or, as Paul puts it:

“Do not automatically cap spend when a channel shows declining ROI. Instead, evaluate whether that channel still outperforms alternatives and contributes positively to overall campaign ROI.”

The real risk isn’t that you push too far into diminishing returns. The real risk is that you retreat too early and shrink the very engine that was driving growth, which is a far more expensive mistake.

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So the real question is not what this says about us. It is what it signals about where marketing measurement is heading.

Marketing measurement is no longer about reporting performance. It is about shaping commercial decisions.

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The measurement reset

We are in the middle of a reset.

For the past decade, marketing measurement has skewed heavily towards what is fast and visible. Performance metrics. Click-through rates. Cost per acquisition. Attribution models that generously reward the last touchpoint.

But something has shifted.

CMOs are seeing performance plateaus. Media costs are rising. Privacy changes have eroded signal. And short-term optimisation is no longer delivering sustainable growth.

At the same time, finance teams are asking sharper questions. Not about impressions, but about enterprise value. Not about channel efficiency, but about incremental growth.

The Forrester Wave recognition reflects this inflection point . It signals that the market is rewarding partners who go beyond channel reporting and connect marketing to total business performance.

From Marketing Mix Modelling to commercial intelligence

Marketing Mix Modelling remains the backbone of serious measurement. In APAC especially, where many organisations are still strengthening their causal foundations, MMM is not legacy. It is mission-critical.

Done properly, it provides what no dashboard or attribution model can: a rigorous, econometric view of what is truly driving growth. It quantifies incrementality. It clarifies the balance between brand and performance. It gives marketing credibility in the boardroom.

That alone makes it indispensable.

But for leading organisations, MMM is also the starting point, not the finish line.

The brands outperforming in volatile markets are those that build on MMM to:

• Connect marketing impact to total commercial performance

• Integrate controllable and non-controllable drivers such as pricing and distribution

• Align marketing and finance on shared definitions of ROI and value

• Use forward-looking simulations, not just retrospective diagnostics

• Protect brand investment while optimising short-term returns

In other words, they treat MMM not as a periodic study, but as the engine inside a broader commercial intelligence capability.

MMM tells you what drove growth.

Commercial Intelligence ensures you act on it, consistently and at scale.

That progression from marketing analytics to enterprise decisioning is central to why leadership in this category matters.

AI can accelerate insight. But it cannot compensate for weak fundamentals.

The AI reality check

There is no escaping the AI conversation. Nor should we.

AI and machine learning are powerful tools. But they are amplifiers, not foundations. If the data is fragmented, if KPIs are misaligned, if brand impact is ignored, AI will simply optimise the wrong things faster.

Forrester’s evaluation makes clear that governance, rigour and scalability matter as much as innovation .

In APAC’s fast-moving markets, that discipline is not optional. It is protective.

The brand multiplier effect

One of the most consistent findings from our ROI Genome research is that brand is not a “nice to have”. It is a multiplier.

Brands that rebalance from a performance-only strategy to a mixed brand and performance approach see dramatic improvements in revenue ROI. Conversely, those that over-index on performance alone risk eroding returns over time.

This is not theory. It shows up in the numbers.

Performance tactics convert demand. Brand investment creates it. The most effective organisations operate at both paces simultaneously.

And this is particularly relevant in APAC, where growth expectations are high but competition is fierce. Short-termism is seductive. But sustainable advantage is built over time.

The brands that win are not the fastest at chasing the next metric. They are the most disciplined at building systems that compound.

Beyond marketing

There is another uncomfortable truth measurement must address.

Marketing typically drives between 10% and 50% of business performance, depending on category and context. The rest comes from pricing, distribution, operations, macroeconomic factors and competitive dynamics.

If measurement ignores these drivers, marketing becomes an easy scapegoat when performance dips.

If measurement incorporates them, marketing becomes a strategic partner in enterprise decisioning.

That broader commercial lens is increasingly what defines leadership in measurement.

What this means for CMOs

Rather than asking who sits in the Leader quadrant, the more useful questions are:

• Does our measurement framework reflect the full commercial picture?

• Are we balancing brand and performance effectively?

• Is finance aligned on definitions of ROI and success?

• Are we simulating future scenarios, or simply explaining the past?

• Do we trust our measurement enough to defend investment when budgets tighten?

Recognition in The Forrester Wave™ 2026 is encouraging, but its real value lies in what it represents: a shift towards disciplined, integrated, commercially grounded marketing measurement.

Because ultimately, leadership in measurement is not about models. It is about giving CMOs the confidence to lead.

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I had an idea and assumptions, but I only knew what the numbers told me and (whisper it 🤫), the numbers lie - not maliciously but because the entire system of measurement is broken. And unless you’re living and breathing marketing measurement every day (which you’re not because you’re too busy surviving), you’re probably making the same mistake I did! So, here’s what I do differently now…

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The hidden truth about marketing leadership

Let’s be honest. As CMOs, Heads of Marketing, VPs and Directors we’re mostly just trying to keep the lights on and every year, the job gets harder:

• New platforms, new formats, new tools.

• AI copy generators. AI media planners. AI attribution (whatever that ends up being).

• Tighter budgets, bigger expectations.

• More hats! Creative lead, content producer, tech stack architect, media negotiator, HR therapist.

We know our teams are stretched. We know the strategy is running on assumptions, but we don’t have the bandwidth to fix it. That’s the part no one says out loud, most of us are just keeping our heads above water.

We’re reacting, not rewiring. We’re optimising the wrong things. We’re presenting clean dashboards to the board while quietly praying no one asks the one question we can’t answer: “What actually drove that result?”

The UPS chatbot and the business case that almost broke me

Let me give you a real example. At UPS, I pushed through a transformation project to build a LINE chatbot for customer service across Japan, Thailand and Taiwan. I knew it would reduce call volumes, improve CX, and modernise the brand experience. But it took a full year to build the business case across multiple markets, languages, and stakeholder layers, and another year to implement. Two years for one project but it was worth it. It became a best-in-class case study. The APAC team is still expanding it today.

However, while the business case was built on customer service, the quiet win was in brand. Across large parts of Asia social platforms aren’t just entertainment they’re service. Being present there forced us into relevance in a way paid media never could, which was great but here’s the truth - that was just one win. For every big bet I fought for, there were five others I quietly buried (sorry team). Not because they weren’t important but because I didn’t have the energy, political capital, or clarity to take them on and, too often, I couldn’t prove they were worth the fight.

The great paid search illusion (and why I clung to it)

You want another confession? Back then, I used to walk into budget reviews with beautiful paid search numbers. The ROI looked clean. The graphs went up and to the right. Everyone nodded. But I knew, deep down, that paid search wasn’t doing it alone. Other channels were seeding demand; brand work, influencer engagement, offline touchpoints, all of it was lifting search. But the data I had couldn’t connect those dots or only some of them. So, I led with the metric that would keep my budget safe.

Now, 12 months into my role at Analytic Partners, the leaders in Marketing Mix Modelling, I’ve seen the truth with clarity I never had before. Those “clean” numbers were a false comfort. I was building strategies on sand.

The 2026 measurement panic

Fast-forward to today, and here’s the part that genuinely keeps me up at night - we’re running modern marketing on broken metrics and lots of leaders don’t even realise it yet.

Let’s take attribution, which is still, somehow, being built on clicks. But in a world of AI-curated feeds, social discovery, and automated journeys with no click path, what happens when that last-click data disappears?

Social search is climbing fast, especially across Asia. On platforms like Xiaohongshu, TikTok, LINE, or Kakao, where content is social-first not web-based, visibility is rising. But those views? That “engagement”? It’s rarely tied to an outcome. And certainly not in a way your current reporting can trace. At the same time, brand contribution is finally getting the attention it deserves. But here’s the twist - we’re still trying to measure brand the way we did in 2012, with outdated reach curves, blunt awareness surveys, and black-box “brand uplift” reports. Let me summarise:

• Our attribution models are built on behaviours that no longer happen.

• Our paid channels are being propped up by organic influence we can’t see.

• Our social engagement has no line of sight to conversion.

• And our brand ROI is still based on recall, not revenue.

Feeling confident? If you’re not urgently challenging your agency, your insights lead, or your in-house analyst right now, you might be building your marketing plan on a fantasy.

The questions we should be asking, now

If you’re a marketing leader, I urge you to ask your team these questions as soon as possible:

1. What role did each channel actually play in this campaign?Did it drive awareness, action, preference, or conversion? Or did it just exist? Can you tell?

2. Did we hit a budget ceiling or is our message decaying?Because decaying creative often looks like declining performance… but so does market fatigue, poor sequencing, or misaligned targeting. If you don’t know which it is, how do you fix it?

3. Are performance drops due to saturation or lack of signal?This is a common one. Saturation means you’ve maxed out your addressable audience. Signal decay means your media is no longer working the way it used to (think platform algorithm changes, format fatigue). Very different problems. Very different solutions.

4. What could marketing have reasonably influenced, given the macro environment?This isn’t an excuse - it’s context. If interest rates spiked, prices surged, or competitor promos flooded the market… and your only lever was to “optimise creative” or “tweak bids” - was that ever going to work?

5. Do we, as a leadership team, actually understand what’s behind the numbers we’re signing off on?

If the answer to any of these is “I think so,” “not sure,” or “let me check” – that’s a problem. And not a tactical problem, a strategic one.

The uncomfortable leadership gap

Here’s another dirty little secret - a lot of us came up through creative, brand, or comms and we haven’t touched raw measurement in years. Now, we’re approving models, interrogating dashboards and defending effectiveness to finance teams based on data we don’t fully understand.

The pace of change in measurement is faster than most marketers can keep up with so ask yourself; do you actually know what’s behind the numbers your teams or agencies are presenting or are you nodding along, trusting the format, and praying it holds up?

What I know now and wish I knew then

Effectiveness isn’t just about proving ROI, it’s about proving what ROI was realistically achievable. It’s not about click-through rates or ROAS either. It’s about understanding the context, which means:

• The economy.

• Supply constraints.

• Competitor pricing.

• Platform throttling.

• Operational limits.

Efficiency is what you control i.e. execution, optimisation, pacing, creative.Effectiveness is the outcome and whether it could have been different.

Where real leverage lives

In my opinion, the most powerful thing you can do as a marketing leader right now is stop trying to optimise broken signals and, instead, ask better questions like:

• Is this a creative problem or a distribution one?

• Have we exhausted demand or just capped reach?

• Was this ever the right channel to begin with?

Remember, most marketing doesn’t fail because the work is bad. It fails because we misread what we we’re looking at and if you’re not absolutely sure what you’re looking at then it’s past time your found out.

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Let’s start with the numbers. According to Jun Cao, Vice President Asia for Analytic Partners, across most FMCG categories in China it is common to see marketing-spend-to-sales ratios run higher than most other markets. Jun adds, “in fact they can get as high as 45% in China whilst in the US a similar sector will typically run less than 10%.” That’s not a rounding error, it’s a different reality.

For global CMOs used to trimming media budgets in pursuit of efficiency, this ratio looks unsustainable. But in China, it’s the cost of entry. Cut spend, and growth evaporates almost instantly.

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Growth follows the money

Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome® data shows that marketing drives between 25% and 75% of e-commerce sales in China, depending on the platform and category. On impulse-driven platforms such as Douyin, that figure can reach a staggering 85%.

In other words, stop investing in marketing and you don’t just slow down - you stall. Brands that pause paid activity see sales collapse almost overnight.

That’s because, unlike in many Western markets, China’s e-commerce ecosystem is powered almost entirely by paid visibility. There’s no “organic” discovery at scale. Whether it’s search, social commerce, or live stream shopping, your reach and ranking depend on how much you pay to play.

The platform paradox

So yes, China is expensive, but not for the reasons most think. The real story is how e-commerce platforms have engineered a pay-to-play environment that forces continuous reinvestment.

Globally, less than 30% of FMCG sales happen online. In China, the figure sits between 30% and 50%, and in some categories, it climbs beyond 70%. That digital dominance makes marketing spend unavoidable: the platforms control the shelf space, the search results, and the attention economy.

But here’s the catch, much of this spend doesn’t pay back. According to Analytic Partners, 80% of brands in China are overspending on performance media. Channels like Douyin’s Qianchuan may drive traffic and transactions, but they’re often barely break-even once costs are tallied.

When performance eats profit

The arms race for visibility creates a familiar trap. As e-commerce grows, performance media spend scales up to sustain it. But because that spend is so short-term in impact - and so dependent on continuous reinvestment - profitability erodes.

Many marketers have found themselves in a paradoxical situation: spend more to sustain sales, but make less with each incremental yuan. The result is a “hamster wheel economy” where brand teams are running faster just to stay in place.

Towards balance

There’s a shift underway, though. Smart marketers in China are starting to rebalance brand and performance. They’re recognising that, in a market this saturated, sustainable growth requires more than tactical spending.

The emerging trend is a holistic measurement approach, one that integrates brand and performance media to optimise for both short-term sales and long-term brand health. Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) is making a comeback, as CMOs seek to prove which activities truly drive incremental growth, and which merely chase their own tails.

The CMO takeaway

For APAC marketers, China’s pay-to-play dynamics are a preview of what’s coming everywhere. As digital platforms tighten control over visibility, the line between “media investment” and “sales tax” blurs.

The lesson is not to spend less, but to spend smarter. Understand where marketing is genuinely driving incremental sales versus where it’s simply sustaining share of voice. Use data, and tools like MMM, to resist the gravitational pull of performance-only strategies.

Because in China, as in many fast-growth markets, marketing spend and growth are inseparable. But only the marketers who measure effectively will turn that spend from a cost of entry into a competitive advantage.

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This is where most of the anxiety around AI search actually sits. Not in disappearing clicks, but in the systems marketers have relied on to explain performance.

AI is not breaking search first. It is breaking the shortcuts we have relied on to explain it.

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The assumption search has always benefited from…

For years, search has occupied a privileged position in the marketing mix. Not because it always created the most value, but because it was the easiest place to see outcomes.

Search sits close to conversion. Attribution models reward proximity. Dashboards fill up with clicks, cost-per-acquisition and conversion rates. Budgets follow what looks provable.

Over time, this created a comfortable assumption: if search numbers were strong, marketing must be working. Low-intent and high-intent queries were bundled together. Generic exploration and brand-led intent were credited equally. Volume became a proxy for effectiveness.

That assumption only held because search absorbed a large amount of low-intent discovery. AI is now removing that layer.

AI didn’t create the attribution problem. It removed the padding.

AI-driven search experiences disproportionately filter out low-intent behaviour. Informational queries are answered directly. Exploratory research happens earlier, elsewhere. Fewer users need to click through to move forward.

What remains is a smaller, more concentrated set of higher-intent searches.

From a reporting perspective, this is destabilising. Clicks decline. Volumes soften. The numbers that once propped up performance narratives are no longer there.

What AI removes is not value, but the comfort of easy explanations. AI didn’t invent this flaw. It exposed it.

What this looks like inside real marketing teams

This shift is not theoretical. It shows up in the day-to-day reality of managing search as Debra Soon, CMO at Singlife, explains:

“Google search is not dead yet, but it is definitely diminishing. We have to continually fight, adjust and tweak our search strategies daily to stay on top, using different tools and partners. For instance, we have already deployed Generative Engine Optimisation. We can’t just pay an agency and leave it – just like anything else in the media, marketing and consumer experience today. Stay on trend!”

What matters here is not the word “diminishing”, it’s the effort. Search is being worked harder because it is being asked to stand in for something bigger: a coherent explanation of growth. As AI removes low-intent volume, that burden becomes harder to carry.

AI doesn’t shorten journeys. It makes them harder to attribute.

One of the more misleading narratives in the AI conversation is that customer journeys are becoming shorter or more compressed. In reality, they are becoming more fragmented and more category-dependent.

AI is now used early as a discovery and research tool, mid-journey to validate options, and late alongside search to support final decisions. Some categories involve weeks of consideration and multiple returns to search. Others move from query to checkout in minutes.

The length of the journey hasn’t changed but the distribution of influence across it has. Unfortunately, attribution systems still look for a single moment to credit whereas AI spreads influence across many such moments.

Why attribution breaks in an AI-shaped journey

Attribution still has value, but mainly within individual channels. It is useful for optimising bids, creative and targeting inside search or paid social.

What it cannot do is explain how channels work together, how brand activity increases the effectiveness of search, or how upstream discovery changes downstream efficiency. Platforms are simply not built to capture those interactions.

As AI removes low-intent noise and search volumes fall, those limitations become much harder to ignore.

Why search looks weaker in an AI world

When low-intent discovery disappears, search stops functioning as a convenient justification for growth. What shows up in search increasingly reflects the strength of upstream marketing activity, not the independent power of the channel itself.

This is why search appears to weaken in an AI-shaped environment. Not because it has stopped working, but because it has stopped carrying volume it never truly owned.

Search is no longer inflating the story. It is revealing it.

Why Marketing Mix Modelling matters here

This is where Marketing Mix Modelling earns its relevance.MMM shows how brand, media and discovery activity increase the value of search, rather than crediting search for demand it did not create. It allows marketers to separate demand creation from demand capture at a moment when that distinction has become commercially important.

The risk is not that search delivers less value. The risk is continuing to read search performance as a standalone growth story when the system around it has changed.

Search has always been strongest when it reflects effective marketing elsewhere. AI is simply forcing that truth into the open.

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For more than two decades, Google Search has been the backbone of digital marketing. If you wanted demand, you waited for someone to type a query. Budgets followed that logic, and search was rewarded for being closest to the moment of conversion.

Today, that logic is being tested.

The more useful question for CMOs is not whether search is declining, but which search is declining.

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Why “search is declining” feels true

There are good reasons this moment feels unsettling. Three shifts are happening at once, and together they distort how marketers interpret what we’re seeing.

First, discovery is moving upstream. People are increasingly encountering brands, products and recommendations before they ever open a search box. Social platforms and content feeds are doing more of the early work — shaping preferences and narrowing choices ahead of any explicit query.

Search still happens. It just arrives later, carrying more bias and clearer intent.

Second, AI is changing the search experience itself. AI-powered answers reduce the need to click through to websites, particularly for informational and exploratory queries. Users often get what they need without leaving the results page.

The behaviour hasn’t disappeared. The visible click has.

Third, paid search efficiency is under pressure. Rising competition, automation and broader match types have pushed costs up while incremental returns flatten. Analytic Partners ROI Genome data shows paid search ROI declining over time in many categories as budgets scale.

Taken together, these shifts make it easy to conclude that search itself is losing relevance.

But that conclusion skips an important step.

To understand what’s really happening, you have to look at where discovery now lives — and how that activity feeds back into search.

Where discovery actually happens now

If people are not starting with Google, where are they starting? The answer isn’t a single replacement for search, but a set of environments that increasingly create demand upstream and shape the searches that happen later.

1. Social and creator‑led discovery

Platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram have become engines of inspiration, recommendation and informal research. On TikTok alone, 57 percent of users use the platform’s search functionality, and 23 percent search for something within 30 seconds of opening the app.

In Southeast Asia, this effect is amplified. Social video now accounts for around 20 percent of e‑commerce GMV in the region, up from less than 5 percent in 2022, according to Google, Temasek and Bain. Much of that growth is driven by creator content that blends entertainment, recommendation and transaction.

Melissa Laurie, Founder and CEO of Oysterly Media, explains:

“Feed Engine Optimisation (FEO) is emerging as the new way brands stop the scroll and create demand inside feeds, not Google Search results. How often has something caught your eye while scrolling that you were not actively looking for? An engaging short‑form video can spark awareness and become the trigger for a purchase. FEO focuses on creating videos that stop the scroll and drive action. It competes with Google Search by influencing decisions before intent even exists, turning passive scrolling into active demand.”

Crucially, that demand doesn’t disappear. It often reappears later as branded search.

Social doesn’t replace search. It loads the dice in advance.

2. Retail and marketplace search

Search is also migrating closer to the point of purchase. Amazon, Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop are now some of the most commercially valuable search environments in APAC.

In these spaces, intent is explicit and conversion rates are high. The risk is that brands treat retail media as a performance‑only line item, optimised in isolation. That repeats the same mistakes seen in paid search, where short‑term metrics crowd out long‑term brand effects.

3. AI‑assisted answers and earned visibility

AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude are also becoming part of the discovery journey. People are getting used to answers, not links.

Mid‑way through 2025, PR platform Muck Rack published new research, What Is AI Reading?, analysing over one million links cited by AI tools. The findings were telling:

• 95% of AI citations come from non‑paid media

• 89% come from earned media

• 49% of citations for recent queries originate from journalistic content

Brands that are visible, credible and well represented across the ecosystem are more likely to surface everywhere, including in search.

As Greg Heilers, Co‑Captain at Jolly SEO, notes:

“We see brands increasing their share of voice by engaging in long‑tail content across the Internet, from Reddit to directory sites to niche industry publications. Most importantly, now is the time to take your brand reputation seriously, trading in old, quick hacks, for real brand marketing.”

Visibility is no longer just about ranking. It’s about being present wherever decisions are being shaped.

As Kristopher Casey, Head of SEO at Resolution Digital, puts it:

“Search isn’t dying, it’s fragmenting. As AI and zero-click experiences grow, brands that win will be those with strong authority, recognisable signals and content designed to influence decisions before the click ever happens.”

What all of this reveals about search

When you step back, a clear pattern emerges.

For years, search was doing two very different jobs at the same time:

• Low-intent discovery — generic, exploratory, easily substituted

• High-intent decision-making — branded, shortlisted, commercially meaningful

AI and platform shifts are now separating those roles.

Low-intent discovery is being answered, absorbed or redirected upstream — into feeds, creators, marketplaces and AI interfaces.

What remains in search is higher-intent behaviour. Fewer clicks, but stronger signals. Less volume, more meaning.

AI isn’t killing search. It’s filtering it.

AI-driven search experiences disproportionately reduce low-value clicks — the kind that were never strong drivers of incremental growth in the first place.

What remains are clicks that convert better, retain longer and are harder for competitors to intercept.

In effect, AI is doing what marketers have always claimed to want:
removing noise and leaving signal behind.

Search is no longer the billboard on the highway. It’s the turn-by-turn instruction once you already know where you’re going.

Not all search clicks are equal

Treating all search clicks as equal has always been a measurement shortcut. It is now a strategic liability.

Low-value search is generic, price-led and easily substituted.
High-value search is branded, category-qualified and reflects everything that happened before the query.

The mistake marketers make is assuming search creates demand.
In reality, search mostly reveals it.

When discovery moves upstream and AI removes low-intent noise, what remains is search as a signal of effective marketing — not a substitute for it.

Search isn’t dying. It’s becoming honest.

In Part 2, we explore why AI-driven search will break attribution before it breaks search — and why that matters more than clicks ever did.

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The real advantage does not come from picking the ‘best’ channel. It comes from how channels work best together. That is channel synergy, and it is one of the most powerful, and most misunderstood, levers available to modern CMOs.

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What we really mean by channel synergy

Channel synergy is not about presence everywhere for the sake of it. Nor is it about simply adding more channels to a media plan. True synergy happens when activity in one channel amplifies the impact of another, lifting total effectiveness beyond what each channel could deliver on its own.

In practical terms, synergy shows up when:

• Brand activity makes performance channels convert more efficiently

• Upper‑funnel channels extend the impact window of lower‑funnel activity

• Offline media triggers search, social and ecommerce behaviours

• Consistent creative ideas reinforce memory across multiple touchpoints

When this happens, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Why synergy matters more in APAC markets

While the principles of synergy are universal, they are particularly important in Singapore, Australia and Malaysia.

1. Consumers are highly connected and highly sceptical

Singapore and Australia consistently rank among the most digitally mature markets in the world. Malaysia is not far behind, with rapid growth in ecommerce, social commerce and video‑led platforms. Consumers move fluidly between channels, often within minutes, and they are adept at filtering out noise.

A single‑channel approach simply does not map to how people actually make decisions. Synergy does, because it reflects the messy, non‑linear reality of modern buying behaviour.

2. Performance channels are under pressure

Across all three markets, CMOs are feeling the squeeze of rising costs, signal loss and diminishing returns in lower‑funnel channels. Search and paid social remain critical, but they are increasingly efficient only when supported by brand‑building activity elsewhere.

This is where synergy earns its keep. Stronger brand presence improves response rates, lowers acquisition costs and extends the shelf life of performance activity.

3. Media fragmentation is the norm

From BVOD and connected TV in Australia, to out‑of‑home and transit media in Singapore, to social‑first video and marketplaces in Malaysia, attention is spread thin. Synergy is what reconnects these fragments into a coherent growth engine, so each exposure reinforces the next.

The compounding effect of brand and performance

One of the biggest myths in marketing is that brand and performance operate on different timelines. In reality, they operate on the same timeline, just with different decay curves.

A recent APAC-focused report from our partners WARC, The Pace Principle, frames this as operating at two speeds at once. A sprint pace, driven by performance activity that secures short-term wins, and a long-distance pace, driven by brand-building that sustains growth over time.

The mistake is treating these as alternatives, rather than complementary modes that must be managed together because brand activity does not only work ‘in the long term’. It also boosts short‑term response by:

• ⬆️ Increasing mental availability at the point of choice

• ⬆️ Improving the effectiveness of calls‑to‑action

• ⬇️ Reducing reliance on discounts and promotions

Equally, performance activity does not exist in isolation. Without brand support, it tends to hit a ceiling faster and decay more quickly.

Synergy is what unlocks the multiplier effect between the two.

Where synergy shows up in real campaigns

While the specific channel mix will differ by market and category, successful synergistic programmes often share common patterns:

1. Offline that fuels online

In Singapore and Australia, TV, BVOD and out‑of‑home consistently act as powerful triggers for search and digital engagement. The strongest results are seen when these channels are planned together, not measured in silos.

2. Video as the connective tissue

Video, whether delivered through broadcast, streaming or social platforms, often plays a central role in synergy. It builds memory, emotion and scale, while feeding more efficient downstream performance.

3. Creative consistency across touchpoints

Synergy is not just about media. It is about ideas. When the same distinctive assets and messages show up across channels, each exposure works harder. This is especially important in fast‑scroll, mobile‑first environments like Malaysia and Singapore.

Measuring synergy without falling into the attribution trap

One of the reasons synergy is under‑invested in is measurement. Last‑touch and platform‑centric attribution models systematically undervalue channels that do not sit closest to conversion.

To understand synergy properly, CMOs need to:

• 👀 Look beyond immediate clicks and conversions

• 📏 Measure combined channel effects, not just individual ROI

• 💹 Account for delayed and indirect impact

• ⚗️Use methods that can see across online and offline

But too often, we stop at measuring 1–2 channels in isolation — typically paid search and social — while ignoring the full ecosystem.

We don’t often evaluate how different combinations behave at different stages of the campaign. For example, a product launch might demand TV + digital (+ OOH, if budgets allow) to front-load awareness. But what if you can’t sustain TV over time? Can OOH and digital take over the load? And what ratio of spend makes sense as commercial goals evolve? These are the kinds of planning decisions synergy thinking makes possible — but only if you’re set up to see them.

And that requires measurement systems that reflect how advertising actually works — across time, across touchpoints, and across combinations.

💡ROI Genome studies show that campaigns planned with coordinated channel roles — rather than channel-by-channel — can drive up to 35% higher ROI.

This is less about finding the perfect model and more about adopting a holistic measurement mindset.

What CMOs in APAC should do next

If you are operating in Singapore, Australia or Malaysia, and growth feels harder than it should, the answer is unlikely to be ‘optimise harder’ in one channel. It is more likely to be ‘connect the dots’ across channels.

Three practical steps:

1. Plan channels together, not sequentially

2. Invest in ideas that travel well across media

3. Measure success at the system level, not the channel level

Channel synergy is not a nice‑to‑have. In today’s fragmented, performance‑obsessed landscape, it is one of the few remaining sources of sustainable advantage.

And for CMOs willing to embrace it, it tends to reward them twice: with better short‑term results AND stronger long‑term growth.

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Because 2026 won’t be defined by new tools. It will be defined by old metrics finally breaking under new pressure. And nowhere will that be more exposed than in how we measure effectiveness — and how we design for decision-making.

The story we’ve told ourselves — that marketing can be optimised by the same signals that justified it — is cracking. Fast.

Prediction 1 - AI Won’t Fix Measurement. It’ll Break the Illusion.

Let’s be clear: AI is not here to clean up your data mess. It’s here to make the flaws undeniable.

In 2026, as AI continues to power zero-click journeys, answer-led search, and automated shortlisting, the volume of measurable clicks — the currency of most attribution models — will fall. Meanwhile, AI-powered dashboards will optimise faster against increasingly partial signals.

We’ll be wrong faster but with more confidence.

This is the moment where marketing stops being a creative function with a reporting problem, and becomes a commercial function with a credibility problem.

CMOs won’t be the ones demanding better analytics — CFOs will. And they’ll ask a simple question: Why are we still using metrics that don’t reflect how demand is actually created?

In APAC, where platform complexity and walled gardens have already strained the system, this reckoning will arrive faster — and hit harder.

Prediction 2 - Designing for Two Decision-Makers: Human vs System

Marketers love talking about customer journeys. But in 2026, that journey has officially split in two.

There’s the system journey i.e. the logic layer. The filters, rankings, ratings, algorithms, and recommendation engines that decide whether your brand even makes the shortlist.

Then there’s the human journey i.e. the feeling layer. The stories, trust signals, leadership voices, and cultural cues that decide whether someone believes your brand belongs in their life.

In Asia, this split has been growing for years. Platforms compress discovery, decision, and loyalty into closed ecosystems. AI will only amplify this, surfacing products based on operational logic, not emotional resonance.

Which means the brands that win in 2026 will treat operational reliability — price, delivery, service — as marketing inputs, not just logistics. And they’ll invest in visibility that doesn’t look like an ad: executive voices, founder content, product walkthroughs, and unpolished expertise.

Real marketing will show up in the system. But brand will be built in the human layer.

The CMO Challenge for 2026: Rethink What You Justified Last Year

If Part 1 was about holding your nerve on brand and resisting the reset reflex, Part 2 is about pulling apart your assumptions.

Not just your media plan. Your measurement logic. Your decision architecture. Your idea of how — and where — growth is created.

2026 will be a year of uncomfortable clarity. The good news? That’s where real strategy starts.

So what now?

1. Fix the feedback loop — Start here. If your data doesn’t connect across brand, channel, creative, and commercial impact, you’re not optimising — you’re guessing. In a world where AI amplifies bad signals faster, clarity is your competitive edge.

2. Build for both journeys — Design with intent. The system journey needs operational strength — price, logistics, service, availability. The human journey needs emotional depth — story, trust, visibility.

3. Diagnose the gap between logic and emotion — Your data should do more than measure performance. It should reveal whether you’re winning the system (search, delivery, ratings) and whether you’re resonating with humans (story, salience, trust). Map both. Then act like both matter.

Because in 2026, the brands that grow won’t just show up where the budget says they should — they’ll show up where the decision actually happens.

In the system. In the story. In the signals that build belief.

And if your measurement can’t see that? It’s not strategy. It’s theatre.

These aren’t hygiene moves. They’re competitive strategy.

Because in 2026, the brands that win won’t be the most innovative. They’ll be the most commercially coherent.

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But the real damage wasn’t AI slop. It was the reflex. We swapped campaigns before they compounded. We chased algorithm changes like they were strategy. We said “be agile” but looked more panicked than disciplined.

2026 demands a reset. Not of technology - of nerve.

The marketers who win won’t be the ones chasing platform signals. They’ll be the ones who build systems that compound and have the discipline to let them work.

Prediction 1 - Paul’s Hope for 2026: Brand Investment That Holds Its Nerve

Economic pressure hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s intensified. Which is why Paul Sinkinson, our MD for Asia and Australia, is choosing hope — hope that marketers will resist the urge to go all-in on short-term tactics and instead hold the line on brand.

“TV used to carry that long-term brand memory load,” he notes. “Now we need to rediscover what that looks like across OOH, radio, and social — with creative that runs longer, not just louder.”

Paul’s challenge is clear: don’t let performance pressures shrink your strategy. Brand investment isn’t a luxury when times are tough. It’s the multiplier that makes your other spend work harder.

Prediction 2 - Influencers Work: When You Stop Treating Them Like One-Offs

There’s a disconnect in how marketers approach influencer budgets. “We’re paying influencers with media money, but we’re not treating them like media,” Paul explains. And it shows. Brands get strong awareness metrics but weak brand recall.

The fix? Treat influencer content as an integrated part of your campaign architecture. The most effective executions aren’t just logo up front — they’re product placements embedded in raw, authentic content that runs over time.

When influencer creative is planned with the same discipline as media — repeated, refreshed, and recognisable — it builds real memory, not just reach.

Prediction 3 - The APAC Signal: Consistency Isn’t Playing It Safe. It’s Playing to Win.

Here’s a myth that needs killing: that changing campaigns frequently is a sign of agility.

In reality, most marketers are reacting to platform fatigue, not audience fatigue. When reach drops or engagement dips, the campaign gets pulled. But often, it’s the algorithm that’s tired — not the idea.

This leads to wasted resets. New messages replace ones that were just starting to land. Brand equity gets wiped before it can build.

In 2026, the smartest marketers will stay the course. They’ll know the difference between message wear-out and distribution drop-off. They’ll build big, durable ideas that flex across formats — without losing their core.

Because consistency isn’t laziness. It’s strategy. And in APAC, it’s becoming a competitive advantage.

Prediction 4 - Jun’s China Outlook: Value and Focus in a Fragmented Market

Nowhere is that competitive edge clearer than in China — a market often described as the future, but now acting more like a mirror for what’s coming next across the region.

Jun Cao, Analytic Partners’ VP for China, sees a strategic reset underway:

“We’re moving from traffic-chasing to value-building.” And that value isn’t just price — it’s emotional resonance, brand trust, and functional excellence.

Two shifts are driving this evolution:

• Value over volume: Consumers expect emotional and rational value — not one or the other.

• Focus over fragmentation: Winning brands will dominate a few core platforms, not dilute across dozens.

In a media ecosystem twice as complex as other markets, China is proving that precision beats presence — and that scale only works if it’s anchored in strategy.

What to Watch For in Part 2

Before you log off for the holidays, here’s your final 2025 marketing resolution: stop mistaking movement for momentum.

And when you’re back — inbox full, budget under review, performance pressure kicking in — we’ll be ready with Part 2.

We’ll unpack:

• Why AI won’t fix marketing measurement — it will expose how broken it already is

• And why brands must design for two decision-makers: the human who feels, and the system that filters

Until then, enjoy the Christmas campaigns that were briefed in September and approved in panic! 🎄

See you in January. It’s going to be a fun year to be brave.

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That is exactly why I wanted to bring Rica Facundo, Managing Editor of WARC APAC and co-author of The Pace Principle, onto The CMO Office Podcast for Episode 8. Rica spends her days analysing what truly drives marketing effectiveness in our region, and she brings a rare blend of empathy, evidence and lived experience to the conversation.

And let me tell you now. She does not hold back.

Asia moves fast. But not too fast for brand building

One of the biggest myths I hear repeatedly in APAC is that long-term brand building does not work here. We are told our consumers are too pragmatic, too fragmented, too digital-first or too price sensitive to respond to the classic effectiveness principles.

Rica and her team at WARC have now shown, with data from across the region, that the opposite is true. When you combine long-term brand building with smart, measurable performance activation, you unlock what WARC calls The Multiplier Effect. And the impact in high-growth markets can be even more dramatic than in the West.

As we discussed in the episode, the challenge is not that Asia ignores the rules. It is that Asia tests them faster.

Culture is not a nice-to-have. It is a growth lever

One part of our conversation that really stayed with me was Rica’s view on cultural insight. Western brand playbooks do not simply plug and play in APAC. They cannot. Our region is too layered, too contradictory, too alive.

But that does not mean we abandon the fundamentals. It means we apply them with greater cultural sensitivity. Rica shines a light on examples across Asia where brands have built genuine emotional connection by grounding their work in local truths, not borrowed tropes.

And for those of us leading marketing in this region, she makes a compelling case. Culture is not just flavour. It is strategic advantage.

And measurement. Always measurement

You know that on this podcast, I will always bring the conversation back to measurement. And Rica was beautifully candid here. Too many marketers in Asia are still evaluating effectiveness through a short-term lens. That means they miss the delayed, compounding value of long-term brand building and underestimate marketing’s true commercial impact.

This is where modern MMM plays such an important role. Not the black-box models of ten years ago, but adaptive, always-learning commercial analytics that help marketers make the right call at the right time. If you are trying to build credibility with your CFO or COO, this is the evidence base you need.

A must-listen for marketers in Southeast Asia and beyond

I loved this conversation. Rica brings such clarity to a topic that is often muddied by opinion, trends and the myth that Asia is somehow an outlier. Spoiler: We are not. We are simply moving at two paces at once. And when you manage the sprint and the marathon together, the results can be extraordinary.

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Recently, I wrote on LinkedIn about a pattern I keep seeing. Marketers are pouring millions into AI-driven measurement tools, campaign automation and bottom-of-the-funnel tactics, but only a tiny percentage feel confident those activities are actually working. More dashboards, more point solutions, more data and yet somehow less clarity.

It is not that AI is the problem. It is that AI cannot save a measurement system built on shaky foundations.

And that is exactly why this year’s Gartner recognition matters.

AI is a multiplier, not a foundation

Across APAC, generative AI is accelerating faster than most teams can keep up with. It is producing creative variations, suggesting audiences and powering media optimisation. But what it cannot do is correct for flawed inputs or missing commercial context.

Analytic Partners’ own Responsible AI report makes this clear. Today’s AI cannot produce reliable commercial analytics without rigorous human oversight, governance, and the kind of domain expertise that comes from years of modelling real-world performance. If you put partial, siloed or poor-quality data into an AI system, all you get is automated misdirection.

AI is a brilliant accelerator, but it cannot build the road beneath it.

Marketers across APAC deserve better than guesswork

The Gartner report highlights why Analytic Partners continues to lead the category, but the real takeaway for me is not about us. It is about the fundamentals that too many marketers have been denied for too long.

Our ROI Genome has shown, over thousands of cases and more than a thousand brands, that most growth does not come from the channels we fixate on. It comes from the full commercial engine. Pricing. Distribution. Availability. Competition. Brand strength. And yes, marketing too, when it is measured and optimised holistically.

This is where so many AI-first measurement solutions fall short. They optimise around what is easiest to track, not what genuinely drives performance. That is why so many teams end up investing heavily in tactics that look good on a dashboard but do not move the business.

APAC marketers are too commercially astute, and their markets too volatile, for measurement that only tells half the story.

We are entering marketing’s realism era

Over the last decade, we have lived through cycles of hype. Everything performance. Everything digital. Everything automation. Everything personalisation. Everything AI.

But the pendulum is swinging again. CMOs across Asia are asking more fundamental questions. What really drives growth? What is the right balance between demand creation and demand capture? How do we build confidence in the numbers we take to the CFO?

Measurement has moved from a reporting exercise to a strategic capability. And the market is rewarding partners who can deliver the full picture, not just the clickable picture.

That is what Gartner acknowledged. Not just technology. Not just modelling. But a rigorous, future-ready approach combining AI, domain expertise and the ROI Genome to give marketers the confidence they deserve.

What this means for marketers across APAC

There are three things I would encourage every marketing leader to keep front of mind.

1. AI supercharges strong measurement, it does not fix weak measurement. It makes good models great, but it makes bad models faster at being wrong.

2. MMM is not old-fashioned. It is essential. It gives you the strategic context AI cannot infer, the cross-channel comparability digital attribution cannot touch, and the credibility CFOs need.

3. The fundamentals are back. And the marketers who get them right will win the next decade across APAC.

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And if you are trying to get those fundamentals in place, that is where we can help.

Analytic Partners has never believed measurement is a dashboard. It is a capability. The Gartner recognition is a milestone, yes, but it is also a reminder of why we do what we do. To help marketers across Asia get the clarity they need, the evidence they need and the confidence they need. Whether that is in planning, optimisation, scenario modelling or preparing your organisation for more responsible and effective use of AI.

If you want to strengthen your measurement foundations, or simply sense-check what you have today, my team and I are always happy to have that conversation. After all, good measurement is not the finish line. It is where better decisions begin.

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In an industry where it’s almost expected that brands will launch something shiny and new for Christmas will this move land them on the naughty or nice list with consumers? Analytic Partner’s Senior Director Jo-Ann Foo reveals what the data shows about building campaigns that perform long after the lights are packed away.

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The most wonderful time of the year?

I don’t know about the most wonderful, but Christmas is definitely the most expensive time of year to be a marketer. Media costs soar, attention fragments and the pressure to stand out can tempt brands into investing in creative that doesn’t deliver the long-term value they expect.

So, what kind of creative actually works best during the holidays? And how can marketers ensure their Christmas campaigns deliver maximum efficiency, not just festive feel-good fluff?

Does the traditional 60-second Christmas TVC work?

For many marketers, the entire concept of a Christmas campaign includes a glossy long-form TV ad with grand production values filled with laughter, nostalgia and a storyline that builds to the reveal of the brand logo at the end.

It’s a well-loved tradition that can generate a lot of headlines (the new John Lewis Christmas ad is out - did you hear?!), but it’s one that may no longer make commercial sense.

Our analysis shows that when brands spread spend across five media channels rather than concentrating on one, they generate around 77% more sales per dollar spent. In contrast, the traditional long-form TVC demands a disproportionate share of production and media investment for a format that reaches fewer people, less efficiently.

The reality is that few brands have a unique message to share during the festive season that truly justifies 60 seconds of expensive broadcast airtime. Research from Amplified Intelligence shows that 85% of ads across modern platforms fail to hold attention for even 2.5 seconds. So, before investing in a glossy TVC, marketers should ask whether their ad can genuinely earn that level of attention. If so, consider earning it on social or digital video channels, which are more cost-efficient and allow audiences to not only watch but like, share and re-watch on their own terms.

Build on what you already have

While it’s tempting to refresh creative for the Christmas, it can actually be far more efficient to leverage what’s already working, especially if you’re paying a premium for the season. Launching an entirely new campaign during the holiday risks further diluting ROI. Instead, consider adding a layer of festive emotion or creative nuance to your existing creative. A holiday lens doesn’t have to mean an entirely new story – it can be as simple as reinforcing familiar brand cues with seasonal warmth.

The fact is, most creative continues to perform long after most marketers think it’s time to change. Of 51,000 campaigns observed by Analytic Partners, only 14 had reached the point where replacing them made economic sense.

Woolworths’ decision to re-run last year’s Christmas campaign shows some brands are getting it. In fact we’ve seen several examples where brands brought back a past Christmas campaign and achieved a ~20% uplift in both response and ROI compared with its first run by by triggering recognition and positive association - two powerful drivers of mental availability during a season when consumers are bombarded with messages.

Think broader, not just bigger

Another way to unlock efficiency is to consider your full business rather than a single product or line. Our analysis has found that campaigns covering more than 50% of a company’s portfolio typically deliver around 118% higher impact than those that have a narrow focus.

In practice, that means aligning holiday campaigns with brand-level messaging that lifts the entire business, rather than concentrating resources on a single stock-keeping unit or limited promotion. Over and over we’ve observed brand messaging outperform short-term performance activations 80% of the time.

Make this Christmas about smart creativity

The festive season will always be a creative playground – and rightly so. Emotion drives attention and Christmas gives marketers rare license to tell human stories. But great creativity should not come at the expense of commercial efficiency.

The marketers who challenge themselves to make Christmas campaigns work harder will come out fittest and firing in 2026. Build on what’s proven rather than starting from scratch, balance emotion with efficiency and remember that consistency and familiarity often outperform novelty.

Get that balance right, and like the best presents, it will continue to deliver satisfaction long after the Christmas lights come down.

Curious how long your creative will keep working?

We’ve been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Report for Marketing Mix Modeling Solutions…again! So, if you need helping deciding when to refresh, retire or relaunch your campaigns for Christmas - or any other time of year - our modellers can help!

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Recorded live on stage at SXSW Sydney, this conversation is a fast-moving, funny, and refreshingly honest take on what happens when creative ambition meets commercial reality. Toby, fresh from collecting eight Effie Awards, shares how data can sharpen great ideas but never replace them.

“Agencies were founded to build brands and grow them,” says Aldred. “We’ve built our own effectiveness practice so that even our boldest creative ideas are underlined by the impact they’ll have.”

From the CFO’s demand for hard numbers to the CMO’s instinct for emotional connection, this episode digs into how creativity and data can (and must) coexist. Toby argues that marketing’s true growth lever lies not in performance metrics alone, but in the human insight that turns spreadsheets into stories.

“If you make every decision based purely on what the data tells you, you’ll miss those imaginative leaps that create real impact,” he explains. “It’s about using data to guide and prove — not to decide everything.”

We also dive into the evolving role of AI in creative development during which Toby admits he’s “a ChatGPT guy,” using generative tools as “a brainstorming partner” rather than a replacement for human originality.

And when I ask him which marketing buzzword gives him “the ick”? His answer is instant: “Lean in.”

“In creativity, we don’t want to lean in — we want to stand out.”

💡 Key Takeaways

• Creativity needs evidence. Data and analytics should amplify, not stifle, creative ideas.

• Growth is the ultimate KPI. Marketing must prove itself as a business growth lever, not just a cost centre.

• Emotion still wins. Storytelling and human connection remain the most powerful differentiators.

• AI is a partner, not a pilot. Generative tools can accelerate ideation, but great ideas still come from people.

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The debate, sponsored by Hawksford and hosted before a packed room of marketers, was a clash of optimism and caution. On one side, Neal Moore, independent content and communications consultant and author of the Pro-Human Substack, warned that AI risks diluting originality and authenticity. On the other, Madhurjya “Banjo” Banerjee, Senior Global Marketing Director at Unilever, countered that AI, used responsibly, is a creative multiplier rather than a replacement.

Moderated by AsiaWorks’ Andrew Clark and introduced by Andrea Ng of Canvas8, the session was part theatre, part therapy for an industry torn between excitement and unease.

Two Points of View, No Holds Barred

Neal opened the debate with his trademark humour, joking that he might have sent his AI likeness to deliver the talk — before noting that such substitution mirrors how consumers feel when “fobbed off with AI slop.”

He argued that brands risk alienating customers by outsourcing creativity to machines:

• Consumer Backlash: Surveys show that up to 80% of consumers would switch brands if communications were AI-generated.

• Cultural Shift: Gen Z, supposedly digital natives, are leading a return to “analogue” experiences — vinyl records, film cameras, and even “dumb” phones.

• Sustainability and Bias: AI systems consume vast energy, worsen climate impact, and reinforce social bias.

• Authenticity Over Automation: AI’s convenience produces inauthentic, homogenised “AI slop” that consumers recognise and reject.

Neal concluded that marketers should “let AI cure cancer and climate change and leave human creativity to the humans.”

Banjo countered that every transformative technology, from the printing press to quartz watches, was once seen as the death of artistry. Each instead expanded creative possibility:

• Liberating the Mundane: AI frees creators from repetitive tasks (“show me the toothpaste tube at 15 degrees left”) and accelerates ideation.

• Democratising Creativity: It allows ideas to scale and adapt to audiences in new, personalised ways.

• Enabling Experimentation: He cited Unilever’s use of AI to test hundreds of launch concepts for a toothpaste brand — even discarding a misguided “gorilla with a bright smile” concept before wasting budget on it.

Banjo’s thesis: AI is not replacing creativity but amplifying it — “killing the mundane, boosting imagination.”

Five Questions That Cut Through the Noise

Fired up following the debate, the audience were split into small groups to tackle one key question each and these were their answers - see what you think and if you agree:

1. How can AI can genuinely enhance creativity?

Speed seemed to be the main enhancement but whether or not that’s a good thing remained in contention. As the group’s spokesperson said, “With AI you can deliver faster… but at the same time, it’s scary because you’re not using your creative and critical thinking.” Now, that’s food for thought 🤔

2. Can AI and human creativity co-exist?

The short and unanimous answer to this questions was, “Yes!”. However, the more nuanced version delivered by the spokesperson was, “We can use it for ideas. We can use it for some processing. But before it goes out of the door it has to have that human touch in the same way there’s a human touch for the input.”

3. How should AI creativity be regulated?

This question was answered with a couple of personal experiences; one about buying a series of books from a beloved author only to find out, upon arrival, that they had been written by AI. Another about using AI to check flight times and being served completely wrong information and the ensuing chaos. The conclusion being that there is definitely a need for stronger regulation to prevent these kinds of incidents and, of course, to protect kids.

4. Is there a limit to how much we should rely on AI for creative work, and where should we draw the line?

This group took an audience-first approach and had to admit that AI ads, as of now, are not proving popular. However, they also pontificated that we are in still in the early stages of the technology and that improvements may yet change audiences minds.

“Either the technology is going to have to get better, and it probably will, or we stop using it and we just use AI for what it is pretty good at right now, which is that back end stuff like finding ways to connect pipes more efficiently, finding ways to produce reports - stuff that people don’t like doing but are needed in the marketing process.”

5. Should the use of AI be declared in creative work?

The spokesperson for this group shared that there were a lot of mixed feelings on the issue but they concluded the following:

“The creative world is probably one of the least necessary areas for (AI) to be declared. But obviously there’s nuances to that. People felt more sensitive when there would be human faces involved or some kind of human representation so, the front cover of Vogue, or if it was a school magazine and you’re generating happy children at school - you’d probably like to know if they were real or not, right?”

The consensus? AI is probably here to stay — but so is the marketer’s responsibility to make sense of it.”

One Thing That Will Never Change

Whatever role AI plays in the future of creativity one thing will never change and that’s our need to understand what’s working, what isn’t and why.

That’s where Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) comes in. Unlike traditional attribution, which credits the last click, MMM uses econometric principles to evaluate all marketing activity — AI-assisted or not — across channels, markets, and timeframes. It separates signal from noise and shows which investments genuinely drive growth.

Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome has consistently shown that brands using MMM see clearer, faster, and more confident decision-making. It’s the difference between guessing and knowing. In a world of synthetic data and self-referential dashboards, MMM provides the ultimate “reality check” — grounding marketers in truth.

The Real Future of Creativity (& Effectiveness)

So, was AI the end of authenticity? The room never reached consensus, but when the moderator asked if they should consult Chat GPT, which had been listening in the whole time, a chorus of ‘No’ arose from the audience!

AI will undoubtedly transform how we create and measure, but human insight will still decide what matters and why. The marketers who thrive won’t be the ones who automate fastest, but the ones who measure most honestly.

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Your Next Step

Whether your marketing is human, hybrid or fully AI-assisted, one thing remains essential: knowing what actually works. Talk to Analytic Partners’ modelling experts to see how Marketing Mix Modelling can help you find truth, and growth, in the age of AI.

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In fact, the campaign you’re most tempted to kill could be the one still quietly delivering your best results.

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The maths behind creative success

Paul would be the first to admit he isn’t a creative by trade - he’s a mathematician who’s analysed nearly a trillion dollars of marketing investment across 25 years. His verdict?

“Creative isn’t the number one factor in advertising effectiveness. It’s number two. The number one factor is advertising spend - your reach.”

Even a mediocre ad shown to everyone will outperform a masterpiece seen by only a few. But once reach is established, creative quality becomes the biggest driver of ROI. Analytic Partners’ global data shows that two-thirds of video performance comes from the quality of the creative, and even in static formats, creative accounts for around 40% of results.

The message is clear: stop arguing about media weights and start sweating the creative that actually lands with people.

Why brand messages beat performance 80% of the time

One of the most startling insights from Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome® is that brand messaging outperforms performance messaging in 80% of cases.

That’s not an anti-retail or anti-digital statement - it’s just maths. A brand campaign works across your entire portfolio. A tactical ad sells one product. In a world where most marketers face shrinking budgets, the campaign that builds equity across the whole business nearly always wins on efficiency.

Paul jokes that the one marketer in Australia whose budget hasn’t been cut should still take note:

“If you want to drive results dollar for dollar, the brand ad is your safety net. It’s the thing that earns you the right to do more product work later.”

Wear out? Or wear in?

Marketers love to talk about wear out. When creative gets “tired”, it’s often code for when we get tired of it. Well, we tested over 51,000 ads to find out when it truly made financial sense to replace an existing campaign.

Of those 51,000, only 14 had genuinely worn out. The other 50,985+ were still pulling their weight. In other words, most brands are binning their best-performing work far too early.

During the pandemic, when many brands couldn’t film new ads, something interesting happened: ROI went up. “Because,” says Paul, “for once, we let the ads wear in.”

When campaigns run longer, consumers move from learning the story to simply being reminded of it. Efficiency climbs. One brand that doubled down on its core creative platform for 30 weeks a year saw ROI grow 2.5 times over four years. Longevity didn’t dull performance, it amplified it.

Consistency: the unheralded superhero

Consistency also unlocks the budget to do things properly. By running fewer, longer-lived campaigns, brands free up funds to create fit-for-purpose content for each channel i.e. the right framing, contrast, pacing and story arc for mobile, rather than lazily dumping a 30-second TVC on YouTube.

The payoff? Up to 300% higher returns for creative designed for digital, compared to recycled TV edits.

Synergy is real AND measurable

Running a campaign across multiple channels doesn’t just increase reach - it compounds impact. Analytic Partners’ research shows that brands using five channels achieve up to 70% higher ROI than those relying on one. The reason is twofold: incremental reach, and creative synergy.

A well-timed retail poster or digital placement reignites all those brand associations built through TV or video. Suddenly, the consumer walking into store is thinking about more than just price.

Even adding more digital channels to a campaign boosts ROI - the effect isn’t limited to mixing online and offline. Integration multiplies value, while fragmentation quietly kills it.

The power of context

Paul also points to the rise of contextual relevance as one of the most reliable performance drivers. Sports creative on a sports page, weather-triggered outdoor, or content aligned with the viewer’s interests; these tactics consistently outperform generic programmatic placements.

Context doesn’t just make intuitive sense. Analytic Partners’ data shows 57% higher ROI for weather-adjusted digital out-of-home campaigns compared to static schedules.

Lots of littles and one long

So how do you balance the need for long-running brand work with today’s demand for constant content? It’s not a contradiction; it’s an “and”.

Short, snackable creative builds cumulative attention. A stream of quick, relevant pieces can add up to the same effect as a single ad watched for several seconds. But those little pieces only work when anchored by a strong, consistent brand platform - the long-form storytelling that gives meaning to every micro-moment.

The surprising power of sound

When the Distinctive Asset Research Group measured every brand cue — from mascots to taglines — one clear winner emerged: sound.

Whether it’s a full-blown jingle or a sharp sonic logo, audio branding sticks in our memory in a way few visuals can. Sure, Netflix’s ta-dum is iconic. But a proper tune you can hum? That’s where real brand magic happens.

Take McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it.” Twenty years on, it’s still everywhere — from TV to TikTok — wearing in, not wearing out. Every note deepens recall and emotion.

And this isn’t just theory. At a marketing event I attended last week, world-renowned speaker Maz Farrelly made this point in unforgettable fashion. She had the whole room stand up and dance to “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Every person — from Gen Z to Boomers — knew the lyrics. That’s the staying power of sound.

Make the logo smaller but the product matter

Paul’s other creative provocation: stop shouting your logo. “Bringing the logo in within the first two seconds gives you an 11% bump,” he says. “But showing the product early gives you a 57% higher ROI.”

So what should marketers actually do?

Paul closed with three practical takeaways every CMO should write on the office wall:

1. Stop talking about wear-out and start talking about wear-in. Great creative gets better with time. Let it.

2. Build one strong, consistent brand platform. Adapt it for five channels and make every format fit for purpose.

3. Use data to prove longevity, not justify novelty. The maths shows that “the next new thing” is rarely your best move.

The campaign you shouldn’t kill

Paul’s final advice was equal parts humour and truth: “Please, for the love of God, stop killing campaigns too early. They’re just starting to work.”

In other words, your best campaign might not be the one in production, it might be the one already running, still compounding in the minds of your customers, still building the brand you’ve worked so hard to earn.

So before you kill it, measure it properly. It might be the smartest thing you never changed.

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