What we think drives profit in ads (vs the truth)
Do marketers really know what drives profit in their advertising?
Quick: what has a bigger impact, creative quality or mix of brand vs. performance marketing? It looks like lots of us marketers don't really know.
Kantar surveyed 7,000 marketers and asked them to rank how 10 different factors impact the profitability of their advertising. Then they compared that to a 2014 study from Data2Decisions of what advertising factors actually do.
The result?
We overestimate the impact of things like multimedia, target audience, and brand vs performance.
We underestimate things like brand size, creative quality, and budget setting across geos or variants.
Are there caveats? Of course!
Not all marketers have visibility to all these factors, so they focus on what they know.
What drives profit might be different than white drives volume (or share).
I haven't looked under the hood on Data2Decisions' methods.
Ads are just one factor that drives profit.
But still. Brand size & creative quality seem to be 1 & 2.
And it makes me wanna learn more.
Just in case I'm wrong about other stuff too.