The Truth About Brand Advertising ROI 

Most companies accept a comfortable lie: that brand advertising can't be measured with precision. They accept vague attribution models, last-touch analytics, and the nagging uncertainty about which marketing dollars truly drive growth.

Great operators reject this thinking. They ask the hard question: "How do we prove brand advertising works and optimize it ruthlessly?"

This measurement shift from correlation to causation is transforming how forward-thinking companies approach brand marketing investment. The methodology behind it is incrementality testing, the same approach that allowed companies like ClickUp to reduce customer acquisition costs by over 50% while accelerating revenue growth by 80%

The Attribution Trap

Traditional attribution models create a seductive illusion of certainty. They assign the credit, such as which channel, which touchpoint, or which marketing campaign gets the win. But these models have critical blind spots:

• Correlation isn't causation. Just because a prospect clicked an ad before converting doesn't mean the ad caused the conversion. They might have already decided to buy.

• Not everything is measurable within a given timeframe. Word of mouth, brand awareness built over months, and long sales cycles don't fit neatly into 30-day attribution windows.

• Attribution becomes political. Marketing teams fight for credit because more credit means bigger budgets. The real question of what's actually driving incremental value gets lost in the noise.

This bias toward whatever shows up in short attribution windows is exactly how waste creeps in. When Uber ran incrementality experiments on its programmatic display spend, it discovered that many conversions would have happened anyway, exposing over 100 million dollars in ad fraud and revealing that seemingly "high-performing" campaigns weren't truly incremental at all.

For brand advertising specifically, this creates a dangerous dynamic. Brand campaigns build awareness and consideration over time, but they rarely get last-touch credit. Performance marketing swoops in at the end and claims the conversion. CFOs look at the numbers and wonder why they're spending money on brand at all.

The truth is, leading effectiveness research from the IPA shows that strong brand campaigns generate more "very large" business effects than short-term activation alone, underscoring that brand investment is a primary driver of growth—not a nice-to-have.

Enter Incrementality: Proving Causal Impact

Incrementality testing flips the script. Instead of asking "what touched the customer last?" it asks "what would have happened if we hadn't run this campaign?"

The methodology is borrowed from medical trials and pioneered in digital marketing by companies like Netflix and Uber. The approach is elegant:

• Create two groups: one exposed to your brand campaign (test group) and one not exposed (control group)

• Measure the difference in conversion rates between the groups

• The lift in the test group represents true incremental impact

This reveals the uncomfortable truth that some marketing that gets attribution credit isn't actually driving incremental results. A classic example comes from Airbnb, which famously cut over $500 million from performance marketing after discovering its branded search campaigns weren't incremental; people were just already searching for Airbnb.

Precision Brand Advertising: Where Incrementality Meets Brand Building

This is where Agility's precision brand advertising approach becomes transformative. We apply incrementality measurement specifically to brand campaigns, proving causal impact to every stage of the funnel.

Here's how precision brand advertising changes the game:

• Geo-specific testing for brand awareness. We run brand campaigns in select markets while holding others as controls, measuring the true lift in awareness, consideration, and intent, outside the potential noise introduced by different markets.

• Brand lift studies that matter. Instead of surveying random people, we measure actual consumer behavior changes in exposed versus control groups using metrics such as site visits, demo requests, and sales conversations.

• Long-term incremental tracking. Brand impact doesn't stop at 30 days. We track how brand exposure influences conversion rates over much longer windows, capturing the true value of brand investment.

• Cross-channel incrementality. We isolate the incremental contribution of each brand touchpoint—connected TV, audio, display, OLV—so you know exactly where to invest.

Precision brand advertising is as accountable and optimizable as performance marketing. You're no longer guessing whether brand campaigns work; you're proving it with data that shows causal impact.

The Agility Difference: Efficient Growth Through Intellectual Honesty

Incrementality testing only works in a culture of intellectual honesty. This is perhaps the most important principle of all. That means:

• Looking at facts objectively, regardless of whose idea they support

• Changing your position and marketing strategy if evidence contradicts it

• Caring about finding the truth

At Agility, this cultural foundation shapes everything we do. When we discover a brand channel isn't driving incremental results, we make expert-driven decisions to improve marketing performance. This approach creates a virtuous cycle. Recent IPA Bellwether data show that in uncertain conditions, many marketers default to cutting "main media" brand budgets while leaning harder into short-term sales promotions and direct response, even though this pattern has been shown to undermine long-term brand growth.

The result of Agility’s approach to incrementality measurement is efficient growth that compounds over time rather than requiring ever-increasing budget to maintain.

Breaking Free from Rising CAC

Most companies accept that CAC will rise as they scale. Channels saturate, competition intensifies, and efficiency declines. It's the comfortable lie that justifies ballooning marketing budgets.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Companies that embrace incrementality measurement can break free from rising CAC:

• Identify and cut non-incremental marketing spend. Many campaigns that look good in attribution reports aren't actually driving new customers. Cutting them reduces CAC without hurting Incrementality studies routinely surface this gap. In one set of channel lift tests, a local services advertiser found that only about 40% of leads driven by paid search were truly incremental. Yet, those incremental leads delivered roughly a 400% ROI once spend was refocused into the channels and tactics that actually moved the needle.

• Double down on what's truly incremental. When you prove a channel drives real lift, you can confidently invest more until the incremental marketing ROI starts to decline.

• Default to measurement before investment. Test new channels at a small scale with proper controls before committing big budgets.

For brand marketing efforts specifically, incrementality testing reveals opportunities most companies miss. You might discover:

• Your brand campaigns are more efficient than performance marketing in certain segments

• Connected TV drives better long-term return on investment than display, even though it gets less last-touch credit

• Brand investment in one market creates halo effects in adjacent markets

• The optimal frequency for successful brand messaging

The Path Forward

Efficient business growth isn't the result of any single tactic. It comes from operating with a commitment to truth:

• Test where signal is available

• Model where it isn't

• Simplify where complexity adds no value

• Scale what proves to drive incremental impact

When you operate this way, brand advertising stops being a leap of faith and becomes a predictable growth engine. CAC comes down, growth accelerates, and your marketing engine becomes something you can scale with confidence instead of hope

The evidence backs this up. Longitudinal IPA studies show that brands that consistently invest in emotionally resonant, broad-reach brand campaigns not only grow faster but also enjoy greater pricing power and lower long-term cost of sales than brands that over-index on short-term activation.

One critical caveat: all of this only works if you have a product people actually want. Without product-market fit, no amount of incrementality testing will save you. If your CAC keeps climbing despite doing everything right, that's not a measurement problem… that’s a product problem.

But if you do have product-market fit, here's the truth: you can drive CAC down while accelerating growth.

CMOs and other marketing leaders who question the status quo, embrace intellectual honesty, and commit to proving causal impact are the ones building the next generation of category leaders.

At Agility, we're building the future with precision brand advertising. Brand advertising should be as accountable, measurable, and optimizable as performance marketing. We're proving it works too.

Ready to break free from rising CAC? Learn how precision brand advertising can transform your growth trajectory.