Budget meetings select for measurable metrics, not for meaningful ones
WarningBrand Strategy
Budget meetings select for measurable metrics, not for meaningful ones
Brand marketers have a structural disadvantage that performance marketers do not: their most important work is the hardest to prove. So the metrics that win budget meetings end up being the ones easiest to measure - impressions, clicks, reach - rather than the ones that indicate whether anything is being built.
Source
Return on Awareness: how brand awareness drives share of search and why it pays to invest early - Google and Tracksuit (2026)
Google and Tracksuit; Tracksuit brand health data joined with Google indexed Share of Search
p3, Return on Awareness, Google with Tracksuit, June 2026
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StatAt low awareness, brand growth converts into search demand roughly one for onePrincipleThe cheaper half of the awareness curve is the half you are on before anyone knows youWarningOn this chart the steeper line is the worse outcome, not the better oneStatThe finding rests on 31 brands in two markets over a single yearPrincipleShare of Search moves 6 to 12 months before market share doesPrincipleSearching for a brand by name is a demand signal, not an exposure metricPrincipleEarly awareness investment delivers the highest return, so challengers gain mostPrincipleWhen Share of Search stops tracking awareness, that is the signal to move money down the funnelPrincipleA famous brand grows at the fringes - new entrants, lapsed users, light buyersPrincipleAwareness, Share of Search and sales together tell you which part of the funnel brokeStatGoogle's planning benchmarks are 40% weekly on-target reach and 2.7x weekly frequencyPrincipleTraditional search was chosen because AI discovery has no measurement history yet