The “Lots of Littles” Playbook: How APAC CMOs Can Build Brands in the Age of Fragmented Attention
Remember when brand building meant one big TV campaign, a few billboards, maybe a radio spot and you were done? Simpler times. Also, as it turns out, ruinously expensive times.
At Cannes, Dr Grace Kite, VP Analytic Partners, dropped the kind of data that makes CMOs sit forward in their chairs. Not a “TV is dead” rant. Something more interesting: proof that fragmented attention isn’t killing brand building — it’s redefining it.
The winners aren’t pining for undivided attention. They’re engineering systems to capture hundreds of scattered touchpoints and turn them into brand equity.
The attention flip: why big TV isn’t the slam dunk it used to be – and what APAC data says
TV still works brilliantly for brand building. It creates emotion, captures attention, and builds memory. But in APAC, it’s now expensive reach for a shrinking audience and the numbers prove it.
Analytic Partners’ analysis of 850+ businesses and hundreds of millions in ad spend shows the balance has flipped. Paid Social leads with a 215 ROI index, YouTube follows at 210, Streaming Video sits at 149 — while Linear TV lags at 98. Digital Audio (121) and Display (101) also outperform TV, while OOH (71) and Radio (34) trail further behind. There’s a clear opportunity for marketers to look at what mix they have.
And the reach gap is widening. In the UK, 16–34 commercial TV impressions are down 70% in the past decade. Across APAC, the pattern is similar: audience fragmentation + cost inflation = declining efficiency for linear TV.
Our advice? It’s not either/or — it’s both. TV still delivers consistency, emotion, and brand codes, and the evidence is clear: true wear-out doesn’t exist as much as you think. Let those big, distinctive assets run long enough to do their job.
But don’t stop there. Layer TV with the channels that excel at reach and frequency in today’s fragmented world. Use social, video, and audio not to replace TV but to reinforce those brand codes, expand to new audiences, and make the most of fleeting attention.
The winning formula is heavy branding, contextual relevance, and a spread across channels. Individually, the exposures might look “little” — but orchestrated together, they add up to a very big brand effect.
APAC is the perfect “lots of littles” lab
Look at the landscape according to 2025 Digital Report by WeAreSocial:
Australia: 94.9% internet penetration, 78.3% on social. YouTube hits 82.5% of internet users; TikTok’s up 17.2% YoY.
Southeast Asia: 61.5% on social; Indonesia alone has 139M social users.
Mobile-first is default. In Australia, mobile connections = 126% of the population.
Your customers aren’t giving you one long look — they’re also giving you many short glances. Repeated, contextual micro-exposures that can compound into impact.
The science: micro-moments really do move the needle
Here's where the research gets juicy. That sacred 2.5-second attention threshold everyone obsesses over? Not the whole story.
The Aggregate Attention study (9,000 lift studies by Havas and Lumen) proves that seeing lots of little ads is a perfectly good substitute for lack of attention on any one ad.
Meta’s data agrees:
46% of online sales come from <2s attention ads
Aggregated exposures drive 21% more sales than continuous ones
34% of offline sales are triggered by “failed” attention moments
In other words: Your brand can be built through micro-moments that individually seem insignificant but collectively create massive impact.
Channel synergy: the ROI multiplier you can’t ignore
The math gets exciting here. According to Analytic Partner’s ROI Genome, using 5 media channels delivers up to 70% more ROI than concentrating on just one. In APAC’s platform patchwork, the effect is magnified
Why channel synergies matter more in APAC:
Platform diversity: Facebook dominates Philippines (97% reach), WeChat in China, LINE in Japan, KakaoTalk in South Korea
Cultural preferences: Video-first in Thailand, image-heavy in Indonesia, text-based in Japan
Device behaviors: Mobile-first everywhere, but consumption patterns vary by market
Creativity: from one “big idea” to a system of ideas
Here's where most brands screw up. They think "lots of littles" means "lots of random." Wrong.
The winning formula: Maintain emotional coherence while executing in diverse, platform-native ways. Think less "big idea," more "system of ideas."
CreativeX research shows 50% of media budgets are wasted on ads that aren't platform-fit—wrong aspect ratios, sound errors (not on), missing branding. Basic stuff that kills brand impact by up to 60 percentage points.
This is your competitive advantage. While competitors cut down TV ads for social, you're creating imaginative repetition—consistent emotion, diverse execution.
Freshness vs. Consistency: Squaring the Circle
For decades, the orthodoxy was clear: keep the same great ad running for years. System1, Ritson, P&G’s Marc Pritchard — all agree that repetition builds memory.
But the platforms play a different game. On Meta, creative “wear-out” happens fast — not because the audience is bored, but because the algorithm decides you’ve hit the same people too often. The result? Declining reach and rising costs.
Tom Roach puts it bluntly: “Meta will say when a creative is too similar, it reaches people repeatedly and wears out for that reason – and doesn’t get you the reach you need.” Their own research backs it:
Campaigns with 20+ creatives see 29% lower incremental CPA
Creative diversity drives 9% more incremental reach
This is the real tension APAC CMOs have to navigate: orthodox brand-building loves consistency, while platform economics demand freshness. The answer isn’t to pick one — it’s to engineer a creative system that delivers both.
That’s where “lots of littles” is exactly that system you need. You maintain distinctive assets, tone, and themes, but deploy them in a steady stream of new executions — platform-fit, audience-targeted, and algorithm-friendly. That way, you’re feeding the machines and building the brand.
The takeaway for APAC CMOs
Fragmentation isn’t a bug — it’s your operating system. The brands winning here aren’t fighting it; they’re weaponising it.
Your customers aren’t broken for having scattered attention. Your media strategy might be.
The bottom line: In APAC's hyper-connected, mobile-first, platform-diverse markets, "lots of littles" isn't just a strategy—it's survival. The data proves it. The platforms reward it. Your customers expect it.
It’s time to stop chasing one “big bang” and start orchestrating a more balanced approach that encompasses hundreds of little sparks as well. With the right channel mix, creative system, and context sensitivity, those sparks turn into a brand fire you can’t miss.
Ready to measure what's actually working?
Our modellers can help you identify which micro-moments are moving your revenue needle and optimise your "lots of littles" strategy for maximum impact. Because in a fragmented world, you need measurement that's just as sophisticated as your audience's attention patterns.