In today’s complex media environment, marketers have a lot on their plate when planning for campaigns. The media landscape is fragmented, marketing budgets are under pressure, measuring every piece of the creative & media mix is increasingly difficult. And technology developments are moving fast, while political and macroeconomic events are rendering the media climate unpredictable. So how do marketers balance these factors, keep themselves sane, and make their brands successful?
Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth data shows that brands which people are strongly predisposed to, have 9x volume share, command 2x the price, and have 4x likelihood to grow value share in the future than brands with weaker predisposition.
The way to achieve success is through touchpoints and interactions that brands have with consumers. This means that understanding the media landscape is one of the cornerstones of this journey.
Kantar Media Reactions surveyed over 1,000 senior marketers globally, and here’s what we uncovered: five ways that marketers can succeed in 2025:
1 – Meaningful data is key in making informed budget decisions
At least half of marketers say their organisation is influenced by multiple factors while they are allocating their marketing budget. Consumer preference, appropriateness for campaign objectives, and easily measurable ROI are all big influences on marketing mix decisions. And many other factors are not too far behind. These concerns are not to be underestimated as hygiene factors. 36% of marketers don’t feel that their organisation has the optimal media mix.Consumer preference is the most important factor driving media budget decisions
Consumer preference is the most important factor, with 60% of marketers claiming to consider it in their budget decisions. And consumers’ preferences are ever-changing, making it hard for marketers to stay on top of. In 2024, point of sale ads (POS) were the most preferred media channel for consumers, followed by cinema ads, sponsored events, newspaper ads and outdoor ads. However, none of these channels were among the channel’s marketers increased their spend most in. A net 22% of marketers said they increased their spend in sponsored events, which is the highest figure among the five. Cinema ads, for example, saw a big decline. They have instead increased their spend on digital channels like online video, influencer content, and social media stories. Although consumer preference is not the only element to consider, the mismatch between what consumers feel and what marketers spend on is evident in this picture.
Marketers are planning to continue increasing their spend in digital media channels in 2025. Online video and TV streaming lead.
To make better investment decisions, what marketers need is meaningful data. Marketers need to rely on data and avoid making assumptions. Deciding whether a campaign is fit for its campaign objectives, ensuring a high ROI and cost effectiveness all depend on consistent campaign measurement.
2- Don’t just say brand-building matters; build your brand.
Over 4 in 5 (81%) of marketers think that a mix of both short-term and long-term is the most important measurement of ROI in their campaigns. This is in line with what each side of the coin brings to the table. According to WARC*, the optimum split of long-term brand-building and short-term activation is 60% to 40%, respectively. Kantar’s LIFT ROI database also shows that 28% of sales come from brand equity as a result of media spend.But do marketers practice what they preach? Although only 7% of marketers think that short-term ROI measurement is most important, 16% measure only short-term. Looking at specific channels, although many traditionally offline channels are thought to be more for brand-building, the picture changes for digital media channels. For example, 6% of marketers use TV for only short-term sales, while this figure goes up to 29% for social media newsfeed ads, and 35% for online display ads.
The truth is that all channels are capable of brand-building to various degrees. In the last five years, following broadcast TV and POS ads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and online display bring in the highest brand contributions from campaigns (Kantar LIFT+ database.) And these figures are likely to increase in the future as more marketers get better at placing their ads in the right context for the right objectives and customise per platform.
*Source: article “Anatomy of effectiveness: A white paper by WARC”.
Brand contributions from digital channels like YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook have increased
3- Campaigns need to be integrated and customised
It’s not enough to consider objectives of advertising and the multimedia nature of the campaign. The campaign also needs to be customised per platform, and each of its elements need to be connected seamlessly. Integrated and customised campaigns perform 57% better than non-integrated and not customised campaigns according to Kantar’s LIFT+ database.However, 35% of marketers globally aren’t confident that their organisation understands the impact of context on creative executions. 46% of advertisers believe that they don’t design content tailored to the channel, and this confidence has been falling since 2022. These results aren’t surprising as 40% of marketers say they test little or none of their advertising. The majority of global marketers know what is wrong with this picture; they know that ads need to be tested at an early stage of creative development (80%), and that creative testing needs to account for different contexts where ads will run (87%.)
These are a lot of numbers, but the story is clear: it’s not enough to know that customisation and holistic campaigns matter. It is important to test and ensure that marketing dollars don’t go to waste via wrong executions.
Advertisers’ confidence about tailoring content to contexts continues to fall
4 – Skill up and be efficient: AI is your ally
The days where testing all your ads and campaigns was a dream are long past. AI is here to increase effectiveness and efficiency across the spectrum, whether for providing inspiration in the scoping stages of a campaign, customising ads for their target, or measuring the previously unimaginable numbers of creative executions quickly and without spending an astronomical amount of money.Only 9% of marketers now think negatively about the possibilities of AI. The majority (74%) say that they are excited about the application of AI to ads, and 55% see AI predictions as a great way to test ads they wouldn’t measure otherwise.
This means that there is still effort to be made to embrace this new technology and integrate into our work lives. Over one third (36%) of marketers feel their team doesn’t have the right skills to use generative AI. Training is a necessity to power up and not fall behind those who are already making great use of AI’s capabilities in their creative and media planning.
Marketers are positive towards the possibilities of GenAI
5 – Don’t let your eyes glaze over: pay attention to attention
Attention is a hot topic in the media industry these days, and marketers don’t doubt its importance in how impactful their communications are. A platform that provides high attention from its viewers or an ad that captures attention is a factor that half of the marketers are already considering when they make their budget plans. 61% of marketers say that attention has an important influence on media effectiveness, and 71% on creative effectiveness.But what is attention? Is it enough to just have your ad in view the whole time it is playing? Should we look at click-through rates? These behavioural factors can be meaningful if considered alongside the quality of engagement. Consumers find what they actively want to consume as engaging. Globally, outdoor, cinema and POS ads are the most attention capturing media channels for them, while marketers think that influencer content, TV and cinema ads are the most attention delivering. This disconnect is due to the different priorities consumers and marketers have in advertising, but it is key to note that attention as consumers understand it has a very strong correlation to ad preference. According to Media Reactions 2023, this correlation is at 90%. There is also an almost 1-to-1 negative correlation of 97% for preference with “ad formats they try to ignore.”
So, what do marketers measure? Behavioural measures like time viewed and clicks still take centre stage with more than half the marketers employing these approaches due to ease of tracking. However, facial coding, eye-tracking, and AI based predictions are now available in context and should be the north star for attention measurement, to capture what really matters: active emotional engagement.
Practice what you preach
Marketers often know the right way of doing things but putting that knowledge into practice takes effort. According to Kantar’s LIFT database, the 20% best ads can contribute on average 9% to brand favourability or purchase intent, while the bottom 20% damage the brand, decreasing these metrics by -5% on average. The key is to always employ a data-based test and learn approach. Ensure your ROI doesn’t suffer from lazy media planning and get your money’s worth from your campaign performance.
To learn more about our Media solutions helping you optimise your advertising campaigns ROI, visit Media Effectiveness and Media planning and effectiveness | Kantar Marketplace.
