Performance advertising mostly directs people to brands they have already chosen
PrincipleBrand Strategy
Performance advertising mostly directs people to brands they have already chosen
Most performance advertising is not converting anyone. Click-through on display is very low, and what the bottom of the funnel actually does is remind and direct - connecting people to brands they already favour. Byron Sharp goes further and treats search as effectively physical availability.
Source
The WARC Podcast - Four marketing frameworks you need to know (2026)
Tom Roach (VP, Jellyfish / Brandtech Group), interviewed by David Tiltman (WARC)
00:23:32-00:25:36, Tom Roach on The WARC Podcast, April 2026
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PrincipleThe performance plateau is Binet & Field translated for brands that only ever bought performancePrincipleLong and short have to be drawn as one system, or the chart itself invites a choicePrincipleFor a digital-first brand, performance spend is a floor, not a variableCaseThe most useful part of the performance plateau was identified by its readers, not its authorsWarningThe flat part of the growth curve is the most dangerous moment in a scale-up's lifeWarningThe brand-performance balance has shifted far less than the brand bubble believesWarningTeams named after funnel stages are structurally incentivised to stop the system workingPrincipleThe funnel survived because it made ad inventory easy to sell, not because it was ever accurateWarningThe funnel's real problem is the assumption that you can push people through stages in orderPrincipleBuild, Nudge and Connect - the funnel rewritten around how memory works rather than how inventory sellsPrincipleAwareness is not wrong, it is just far too thin a description of the top of the funnelPrincipleCategory entry points are what replaces the message on a creative brief