The advertising Doom Loop - performance budgets, plateauing effect, faulty metrics, repeat

PrinciplePaid Media

The advertising Doom Loop - performance budgets, plateauing effect, faulty metrics, repeat

The advertising Doom Loop: budgets shift to "performance" formats, advertising playback plateaus, teams optimise against faulty metrics, and the cycle repeats. Relentless optimisation for clicks and conversions diminishes effectiveness while eroding brand trust, and marketers default to short-term investment because it is what can be quantified immediately.

Source

The Brand Reset: Capturing Sales and Brand Equity from Attention - dentsu, in partnership with Kantar and Lumen (2026)

dentsu with Kantar, Lumen and TVision; methodology and analysis Dan White, advisor Les Binet; foreword Will Swayne

p7, The Brand Reset, citing WARC's The Multiplier Effect (2025)

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StatA single video exposure is projected to still be producing sales three years later StatThe same exposure that builds the brand also moves sales in the next three months StatDigital video builds brands over years, and Linear TV still builds them harder PrincipleShort-form formats win on cost per point of long-term lift, not on the size of the lift StatConnected TV now delivers roughly three quarters of Linear TV's long-term brand effect WarningCTV closing the gap is not the same as Linear TV losing its job StatHalf of marketing leaders cannot tell whether CTV works as well as Linear TV StatTwo in five CMOs cannot measure the efficiency of next-gen video at all PrincipleSkippable ads start weaker than non-skippable ones and then overtake them PrincipleAttention someone chose to give is worth more than attention you made them give PrinciplePlan video by skippable versus non-skippable, not by screen size or channel StatAttention stops paying its way after about twenty seconds