Partnership with PadSquad drove incremental engagement for Stella & Chewy's While the decision to invest in mobile advertising may be easy, creatively devising ways to stand out and make a lasting impression is far more challenging. Integrating technical formats like AR in advertising campaigns can help your message stand out from the crowd of static or video social ads. Utilizing technology like AR in advertising campaigns requires a strong ad tech partner, a data-driven media strategy, and personal connections with consumers. In 2023, Exverus teamed up with ad-tech solutions provider PadSquad to develop a new mobile ad experience for Stella & Chewy’s, the raw natural pet food for dogs and cats. Together, we built an interactive AR experience in which pet parents were encouraged to upload photos with their pets, decorate them with AR frames and filters, and upload them to social media. Try it yourself here! Our interactive, programmatic mobile experience helped make Stella & Chewy’s a category leader in just a few months. Nearly a quarter-million users engaged with this campaign, leading to a 702% higher engagement rate than standard benchmarks! “This is the sort of participatory advertising that brands dream of. Stella & Chewy’s is now a category competitor with a deeper connection to a growing segment of brand loyalists.” Anna Elema, Exverus Media Director Stella & Chewy’s experienced an incremental 2% lift in brand awareness from just this one tactic with a <$500K budget. And the campaign won the 2023 MediaPost OMMA Award for Best Mobile Marketing campaign of the year! Why it worked: In this case, we tapped into the emotional connection people have with their pets and allowed them to be creative with the ad unit, to make something uniquely their own, and to share photos of their pets, which pet owners already love to do. Read more about the campaign in Adweek here.

New research proves media is a marathon, not a sprint We've said it before: investing in paid media is like a 401K, not a penny stock. And now, the market's catching up to the math. WARC's 2026 report, "The Pace Principle 2.0," explains why short performance marketing plays fail to compound: brands leaning too hard on quick-hit social spikes hit a "platform ceiling" — content loses momentum the moment paid promotion stops, because it never had time to build beyond a single channel or moment. And that's just the first of three kinds of plateaus WARC's research identifies. Clear the platform ceiling and you run into a "cultural ceiling" (momentum tied to a trending moment resets the second that moment passes. Clear that too, and the hardest barrier is a "self-sustaining ceiling," where creators and communities keep carrying an idea forward on their own, without you constantly prompting them. Very few brands ever get there, and it's not a coincidence that it takes the longest to build. Here are 3 actionable ways to avoid performance marketing plateaus; details on each below! Plan for a 12-month distribution, not a 6-month blitz Refresh creative assets throughout the campaign Pair ROI with brand equity and CLV in your reporting How long should a performance marketing campaign run for the best ROI? Using our proprietary Marketing Mix Modeling tools, Exverus compared a client that invested $10MM in advertising over just six months against spreading that same $10MM across a full 12 months. The result: a 51% increase in ROI from the longer timeframe alone — same budget, same brand, dramatically different return. Independent data from our partners at Keen Decision Systems noted a similar pattern: spend spread across a longer period generated $2.21 in revenue ROI, compared to $1.46 for spend concentrated into a shorter window. Now, Mastercard's recent analysis of 500+ campaigns found that campaigns running longer than 90 days consistently outperform shorter efforts, with post-campaign uplift nearly doubling for the longer-running ones. Here's why: Brand media campaigns, spike-captured audiences, and loyalty infrastructure don’t have time to compound if the underlying plan resets every few months. Remember when we discussed the difference between the World Cup (a month of games) and the Super Bowl (one night)? Longer flights give marketers room to refresh creative, rotate audiences, and sequence messaging across the customer lifecycle. A six-month sprint doesn't have time for that before the budget runs out. A short campaign has to nail everything on the first try, whereas a longer one gets to learn. And it's not just about giving the algorithm more time to optimize; it's about giving the brand itself more time to compound. Each touchpoint a consumer has with your brand builds familiarity, and familiarity breeds trust. Six months of concentrated spend front-loads that exposure and then goes dark; whereas twelve months of distributed spend keeps reinforcing it when new buyers enter the market. Same dollars, same brand, but only one plan is still working for you in month eight. Make the most of tentpole media events by planning for long-term value and retention from the beginning. How do you avoid ad fatigue in a paid media campaign? You know that feeling of watching a TV show and seeing the same ad more than three times?! It's the worst, and you'll be paying money to turn customers AWAY from you. Easy does it! Blitzing your consumers in a short window causes ad fatigue and can build negative brand perception rather than positive recall. It's a common performance marketing mistake. Switch up your creative assets Spread spend over a longer flight instead of concentrating it into a short, heavy burst, and refresh creative before fatigue sets in. A 2024 article in Journal of Advertising adds an important nuance to this: How fast an audience wears out on your ads depends heavily on how attached they already are to your brand. In other words, consumers with weak or no existing brand attachment fatigue fastest. So a cold audience that's hit with a heavy burst of the same creative is most likely to tune you out - not great for brand awareness-building! A longer campaign flight lets you build familiarity first, refresh creatives before fatigue sets in, and earn the tolerance for repetition that builds memory instead of irritation. At Exverus by Brainlabs, we've spent 12 years refining our approach to full-funnel performance marketing for growth-stage, culture-creating brands. Here's what demonstrably works. What is dual cadence measurement? If you only report on ROI, you're only telling half the story — and it's the half that argues against the strategy that's actually working. CTR, ROAS, and CPM fluctuate weekly due to seasonality, creative fatigue, and platform noise; not one of which is a strategy signal. The metrics that actually predict future revenue (brand equity, consideration, share of voice) are quarterly by design, since brand lift and MMM need time to become directional. If you read a 12-month campaign through a weekly dashboard alone, you'll end up cutting the exact investment that was working. The fix is running two tracks side by side, not picking one. At Exverus, we call this dual cadence measurement: weekly check-ins for pacing and spend efficiency, and quarterly reports for brand lift, awareness, and MMM. WARC's research supports the same split: fast metrics are for in-flight optimization only, while slow signals track sustained growth. Mastercard's data sharpens the point even further: post-campaign uplift nearly doubled for longer-running campaigns, meaning some of the strongest evidence shows up after the flight ends. Media metrics for the long game, not just the launch Keep ROAS and CTR for mid-flight pacing decisions, not for judging whether the strategy worked. Build brand lift and MMM into quarterly reviews, not weekly dashboards. Make at least one forward-looking metric — awareness, consideration, or brand lift — non-negotiable in every QBR. Learn more about dual cadence reporting and choosing the best KPIs for your campaign. At Exverus, we built our organizational structure around the dual-cadence model of simultaneous brand/performance media long before research proved it out and other agencies began catching up. As an independent agency, we maintain the agility to keep planners and performance buyers working closely together on every account, with the added scale and technological capabilities of larger shops. Curious what we could do for your brand? Drop us a line! For more performance marketing tips, agency news, and campaigns, subscribe to our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter. AI Disclosure: We use AI models to quickly consolidate information from top industry sources and combine it with our real-world expertise. Every word drafted is carefully reviewed, edited, and confirmed by human eyes and hands for accuracy and quality. All information on exverus.com has been executive-approved and is updated daily.

How to identify, partner with, and measure the value of creators for long-term business growth Jump To: What's the difference between an influencer and a creator? How do we identify the right niche creators and local influencers? Should I hire an influencer marketing agency or use a self-serve platform? What's the relationship between UGC and creator marketing? How does creator marketing fit into an omnichannel media strategy? How can creator marketing build customer loyalty? How do you measure the creator ROI of creator partnerships? What mistakes should brands avoid when partnering with professional creators? Key Takeaways: Creator marketing delivers its strongest ROI in the upper and middle of the funnel. Exverus recommends using creators for awareness and product education, then converting engaged audiences through search and retail media, measuring success by brand lift and assisted conversions rather than last-click attribution. Follower count is no longer the best signal for choosing a creator. Algorithmic feeds now distribute content by relevance, so brands should select creators based on audience fit, campaign objectives, budget, geography, and content format. Leading brands now treat creators as year-round brand infrastructure. At Cannes Lions 2026, Southwest Airlines, Duolingo, and Unilever described recurring creator ambassador programs, and Exverus' own multi-year creator partnerships for New Belgium Brewing show the value of building on past results. Creator content can extend far beyond social media. Social Reach, a proprietary format from Exverus and SeenThis, places vertical creator video in premium display placements across the open web and has outperformed paid Meta ad efficiency by 50%. Think quick: I bet you can name your favorite influencer faster than your favorite celebrity endorsement. The global creator industry is projected to reach some $480 billion in size by 2027, nearly doubling in three years, according to Goldman Sachs. And just in the US, EMARKETER forecasted influencer marketing to grow 14.2% in 2025 to $9.29 billion—not including paid media amplification or spend outside social media. We all see this trend in our feeds every day! And the right creator can do more than just recite your product’s features; they can demonstrate to an audience how to use your product in real life and instantly show its effects. For example, when we won a 2024 WARC Effectiveness Award for our work with Premier Protein on Amazon Prime Days, it wasn't for product-based ads listing the ingredients and health benefits. Instead, we partnered with fun, aspirational health influencers that made videos demonstrating how they use Premier Protein in their daily morning routines. This helped the audience visualize themselves using the product and increases the chance of a buy. Let's answer some FAQs about creator marketing in 2025: What's the difference between an influencer and a creator? We often use these terms interchangeably, but there are some subtle differences: Influencers are primarily defined by their ability to influence purchasing decisions and drive audience behavior. Follower count is traditionally the key metric for success. Creators emphasize content quality, storytelling, production value, and longer collaborations. They're usually positioned as experts with specialized skills, rather than merely people with large followings. Creators typically diversify their revenue streams, going beyond product sponsorships to subscriptions, courses, speaking opportunities, or their own product launches. Learn our scientific approach to spending on social for maximum return How do we identify the right niche creators and local influencers? Bigger isn’t always better. In the past, larger influencers were thought of as better for brand awareness and broad reach, while micro- or nano-influencers were more likely to drive sales conversions for their trustworthiness and relatability. But today, that's not always the case. Algorithmic social feeds are now highly astute at feeding the right content to the right consumer at the right time, making follower count just one of many factors determining placement. The key to identifying the right niche creators for your project is precise targeting based on deep insights about your audience. Establish: Demographics and psychographics Campaign objectives Budget parameters Geographic scope Content format preferences These will help you narrow down your search to make the most of every influencer dollar you spend. Should I hire an influencer marketing agency or use a self-serve platform? This depends upon a few factors like your campaign budget, your in-house manpower, the length and complexity of the campaign, and the level of control and oversight you want to maintain. Agencies are excellent for managing complex or long-term partnerships, especially if you have limited time and resources to do the legwork in-house, but they can cost more. Choosing a self-serve creator marketing platform can be daunting, as the available options are ever-growing. But platforms like CreatorIQ and Captiv8 have been building out their tech capabilities to better automate creator vetting, brand safety management, customer service, and reporting. In short: More budget, less time? Agency. More time, less budget? Platform. Learn to meet savvy consumers everywhere they search What's the relationship between UGC and creator marketing? User-generated content (UGC) is a highly effective type of content, which can come in the form of photos, videos, reviews, or text created by people, rather than brands. UGC can be: Organic, in which actual customers voluntarily create content for free. This type is the cheapest and most authentic but hard to scale and control. Paid, in which creators make content for a brand's channels that looks like organic UGC. It's cheaper than a full influencer partnership. 93% of marketers report that UGC performs better than branded content, according to Hootsuite. UGC can be integrated into social but also CTV campaigns, with shoppable ad formats and interactive features for a smooth path to purchase. Organic UGC builds authentic community, UGC creators provide scalable authentic content, and influencers reach new audiences. Most successful brands use all three strategically. How to build a successful UGC partnership: 1. Run A/B tests to determine which creative messaging resonates best with your audience 2. Create a natural, relatable vibe that feels more entertaining or educational than promotional 3. Use UGC to retarget people who have already interacted with your brand to reinforce trust and push conversions 4. Integrate UGC onto your product detail pages (PDPs) to reinforce trust & drive conversions Instagram Reels beats TikTok on several key metrics, and Meta's ad capabilities are only getting stronger. How does creator marketing fit into an omnichannel media strategy? Creator content can serve marketing objectives at all levels of the customer journey: Brand awareness & discovery As the Premier Protein example above illustrates, social media channels can be a powerful brand discovery source that displays your products and messaging to a wide audience with broad reach. Purchase consideration Creators can "unbox", review, or give informative tutorials on your products or services Link directly from content to purchase pages through link stickers, tappable buttons, or other interactive features. Creator discount codes & affiliate links drive conversion Source: WARC "The Future of Media 2026." How can I repurpose video ad creative? Exverus recently partnered with ad-tech vendor SeenThis to launch a new ad format called Social Reach, which takes vertical videos (brand-made or creator-made) and places them in premium Display slots across the open web. This allows media teams to repurpose creative assets and extend their reach far beyond social media platforms. It's already beating the efficiency of paid Meta ads by 50%! Social Reach is just one example of repurposing creator content for multiple channels. Other ways include: Linking to YouTube videos from social posts or blog posts Reusing YouTube videos for CTV ads Building earned media coverage around brand/creator partnerships The key is keeping the visual vibe and the messaging consistent. Earned media & organic reach Trade publications like AdAge and Marketing Dive love to report on a good brand/creator collaboration, so leverage it to earn even more publicity for both parties. Planning a PR strategy around your partnership is a cost-efficient way to multiply the impact on awareness and reach. Live, experiential events Think outside the screen! Live, IRL activations with brand reps and creators onsite draw crowds, encourage organic posting, and leave a deeper impact on attendees than a digital ad alone. Get some ideas for experiential marketing activations below. How can creator marketing build customer loyalty? At Cannes Lions 2026, the CMOs buzzing about creator marketing weren't talking about campaigns anymore; they were talking about relationships. Southwest Airlines, Duolingo, and Unilever all described creator strategies that look less like paid social buys and more like standing brand infrastructure. Southwest suggests building a roster of regular, recurring ambassadors and giving them the same treatment you'd give your best partners: early access to news, company dinners, a dedicated newsletter. Unilever's CEO said creators are the people who decide whether a brand stays relevant when the ads stop running. They’re building the year-round brand equity you already need to have in place before a performance campaign. And Exverus' own New Belgium Brewing media team can attest to the mutual benefits of extending their creator partnerships from year to year. Senior Media Planner Marlee Thompson explains: “We’ve been able to learn from the previous year and lean into what worked best for reach and engagement to get the most value for our investment. We’re continuing to build a strong rapport with the creators’ audiences and producing entertaining content that speaks to both the audience's and the brand’s tone and style.” How do you measure the ROI of creator partnerships? 79% of marketers cite determining creator ROI as their biggest challenge. That's not a measurement problem – that's a strategy problem. Why creator ROI feels impossible Attribution gaps plague creator campaigns because creator content often drives awareness and consideration rather than direct conversions, making it difficult to isolate impact. Add platform fragmentation—where each network offers different metrics, attribution windows, and reporting standards—and cross-channel comparison becomes nearly impossible. But the silliest reason? Over 50% of marketers spend only 30 minutes or less vetting a single influencer, and only 25.6% consistently receive documentation on influencer vetting. You can't measure what you didn't plan for. The answer is upper-funnel Many brands push creator partnerships toward social commerce—buying products directly on TikTok or Meta. But as we've noted before, social platforms are still most effective for upper- and mid-funnel awareness goals, not direct conversions. Just because a platform is popular doesn't mean it's the most cost-effective way to close sales. Creator content builds discovery and demand; search and retail media convert it. How to measure creator ROI Map creator partnerships to funnel stages, not vanity metrics. Use creators for brand awareness and product education, then retarget engaged audiences through retail media networks where purchase intent is highest. Track assisted conversions, not last-click attribution. Also, build creator briefs that define success beyond engagement rates—brand lift, consideration, search volume increases. Finally, invest in proper vetting: Consider audience quality, brand alignment, and past performance data. What mistakes should brands avoid when partnering with professional creators? Freebies aren't payment Sending a free product sample is not sufficient payment for a whole day's worth of work packing, commuting, shooting, editing, writing copy, sharing content, and doing internal admin tasks. If you don't have the budget to pay a creator's going rate for a day of labor and supplies, please don't reach out. It's a waste of their time and yours. Let creators do what they do best Don't hire a well-known internet personality and then snuff out their whole personality by making them read your scripts and perform your corporate-speak. Let creators do what made their audience love them in the first place. If you can't relinquish that control, then just hire actors for a traditional commercial. No generic template emails Lia Haberman, social & creator marketing consultant to Fortune 500 brands and author of the popular ICYMI Substack newsletter, advises: Don't send out a generic message. Don't address them as "Dear creator" or use their social handle instead of their name. Take the time to do your research. Make the effort, use their name and some acknowledgment of why they're a good fit for this campaign. Personalize the outreach. I've worked with creators who say they don't want to feel like they're just a cog in the wheel and impersonal pitches are a deal breaker for them. In 2026 and beyond, brands will start looking at influencer marketing as an overall strategy, rather than a silo in their marketing mix. Influencer and creator marketing can elevate, if not lead, every pillar of marketing communication when planned and executed thoughtfully. To learn more about what the right creator partnership could do for your brand, drop us a line! For more media tips, analysis, and case studies; subscribe to our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter here. AI Disclosure: We use AI models to quickly consolidate information from top industry sources and combine it with our real-world expertise. Every word drafted is then carefully reviewed and edited by human eyes and hands for accuracy and quality. All information on exverus.com has been executive-approved and is updated daily.

Key Takeaways Sonic logos that include the brand name are 9x more effective than those without, according to The SoundOut Index 2025, which covered 174 brands and over 70,000 consumers. Consumers overestimate their own sonic memory: while 36% of consumers claim they recognize a sonic logo, they are only right 43% of the time - and without a brand name, accuracy collapses to 18%. Too many brands are chasing short-term buzz over lasting recognition. Sonic branding agency amp's Best Audio Brands 2026 report found that use of one-off custom music jumped 140% in a year, while use of branded music (sound a brand owns and repeats across campaigns) dropped 67%. US adults average 2 hours 44 minutes of daily audio consumption per EMARKETER, yet audio ad spend still lags behind that listening time. Much is written about the creative side of advertising and the visual representation of brands via logos, color palettes, and website design. But one crucial element remains overlooked and underutilized: Audio! Nowhere is the power of sound clearer than on short-form video. According to the TikTok and Luminate Music Impact Report, 84% of songs that entered the Billboard Global 200 in 2024 went viral on TikTok first. When a sound can travel that far, brands have a real chance to create moments that stick in consumers' ears long after they've stopped scrolling. What is sonic branding? Sonic branding, sometimes called audio or sound branding, is the strategic use of sound or music to reinforce a brand's identity and create a memorable experience for target consumers. It includes jingles, sound logos, brand anthems, brand voices, and functional sounds that evoke emotion, convey messages, and establish a brand's personality. This is not a new concept. Jingles and audio signatures date back to the 1920s, when radio advertising first took off. What has changed is the number of places a brand can be heard. Beyond radio, streaming, and podcasts, audio advertising is expanding into retail media networks (like Lowe's in-store audio) and non-intrusive in-game placements, which means a brand's sound now travels to the store aisle and the game console, not just the car radio. What are some examples of sonic branding? When we say "Nationwide is on your side," you probably hear the melody. The same goes for McDonald's "ba da ba ba ba," Netflix's "ta-dum," the Nintendo Switch "click," or Tony the Tiger's "They're grrrrreat!" SoundOut's 2025 Index, a ranking of 174 brands' sonic logos, adds a few more to the list. Arby's took the #1 spot as the most recognizable sonic logo, displacing 2023 leader Hot Pockets. AutoZone is close behind, with Liberty Mutual completing the top 3, all of which rated over 90% brand attribution with consumers. Heritage also pays off: Maybelline's refreshed 25-year-old jingle stormed straight into the top 20 with 73% attribution, and Pillsbury's updated Doughboy giggle also outperformed many newer compositions. The common thread is consistency, and many of these assets say the brand's name out loud. More on why below. Where smart media buyers are spending in podcasts, radio, video, & gaming Why does sonic branding matter now? We've been tracking audio's momentum for years. Audio advertising was by far the fastest-growing media channel of 2024, showing a remarkable 36.4% year-over-year growth according to IAB's Internet Advertising Revenue Report. Even so, as we noted in our look at what's new in audio advertising for 2026, spend still hasn't caught up to how much people actually listen. That gap is even wider among younger consumers. The Gen Z Audio Report from Edison Research and SiriusXM Media found that Americans ages 13-24 spend four hours and 10 minutes with audio per day. For brands that want to reach the next generation of buyers, a consistent sonic identity is one of the most direct ways in. How effective is sonic branding? The case for sonic branding rests on three benefits: differentiation, emotional connection, and recall. In a crowded marketplace where consumers are bombarded with messages across devices, a distinct sound helps a brand stand apart. Research backs this up: Edison's 2025 research shows that humor and music remain the most effective triggers for engagement among Gen Z listeners, and 49% say they are much more likely to pay attention to an ad if it makes them laugh. Sound also shapes how an ad lands emotionally. Spotify's Sonic Science Volume 2 study found that 60% of listeners' ad engagement carries over from the audio content heard immediately before, which is why context and creative fit matter as much as the sound itself. Recall is where the newest data gets most useful for marketers, and most humbling. SoundOut's 2025 findings show that a memorable melody alone isn't enough; 22 of the top 25 sonic logos include the brand name, and 90 of the bottom 100 omit the brand name. The takeaway is that a sonic asset only builds equity if listeners can connect it to the right brand. The ubiquitous video platform is now America's #1 home for podcasts. Learn how your brand can benefit from its reach, engagement, and loyalty. What is the short-term trap in audio marketing? Sonic branding agency amp's 2026 report points to a worrying trend: Brands are commissioning more one-off custom tracks while investing less in owned, repeatable sound. As one amp executive put it, "The story of 2025 [was] a pivot from building equity to making an impact". We see this as another form of short-termism. A fresh track may win a campaign moment, but a consistent sonic asset repeated across every touchpoint is what builds long-term brand recall and loyalty. In an increasingly voice-activated ecosystem of smart speakers, podcasts, and in-store audio, every aural touchpoint is a chance to reinforce your brand. All you need is the best media agency to put your brand's message into the right ears. For more media buying tips, campaigns, and agency news, join our free weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter. AI Disclosure: We use AI models to quickly consolidate information from top industry sources and combine it with our real-world expertise. Every word drafted is carefully reviewed, edited, and confirmed by human eyes and hands for accuracy and quality. All information on exverus.com has been executive-approved and is updated daily.

Habit's guest chef residency series launched with chef Jet Tila, inviting culinary collaborators to create limited-time menus that go beyond the standard celebrity meal Habit's new chef in residency program kicks off with Jet Tila JULY 22, 2026 (LOS ANGELES, CA) -- Habit is rethinking the celebrity restaurant collaboration with the launch of Habit & Co., a new residency platform by creative agency Optimism BH, media agency Exverus by Brainlabs, and partner agency SonderCo that invites chefs and cultural figures to develop original limited-time menus for the fast casual chain. Starting with chef/restaurateur and television personality Jet Tila, the social-first platform replaces the familiar celebrity order with an eight-week culinary residency, giving each collaborator the opportunity to create dishes inspired by their own tastes, backgrounds and stories. Media agency of record Exverus by Brainlabs will unfold the campaign across eight weeks with a social-first strategy supported by digital out-of-home, in-restaurant creative, owned digital channels, paid and organic social media, creator content and an editorial partnership with Eater. Each residency concludes with a fan giveaway tied to the featured resident. "Habit asked us to deliver overnight sales and long-term brand building simultaneously," says Georgia Schreiner, media director at Exverus. "The only way that works is if paid media feels less like advertising and more like culture. Each resident chef gets a bespoke channel strategy tailored to where their core audience actually lives." Habit taps LA Dodgers pitcher Alex Vesia for Double Play menu Next up to the plate is Dodgers pitcher Alex Vesia for an eight-week menu inspired by one of baseball's most iconic moments: the double play. Like his predecessor, Chef Jet Tila, Vesia’s residency will be announced on a 20,000 square foot digital out-of-home (DOOH) screen in his hometown of Los Angeles, followed by a full-funnel media campaign. Courtesy of creative agency Optimism BH “To make the campaign feel as double-sized as Alex’s menu items, we partnered with NPRP Media for a giant DOOH play,” says Exverus by Brainlabs Media Director Georgia Schreiner. “For this residency, we’re tapping into the deep regional connection between Alex and Dodgers fans in California, while expanding the campaign nationwide.” Creative agency Optimism BH designed an 8-week social content plan that will feature and highlight details around Alex’s story and menu. Fans will also have the opportunity to take home an exclusive Alex Vesia x Habit bobblehead. Partnership agency SonderCo collaborated with the brand from early concept development to strategy and talent relationships that brought Habit & Co. to life. “Unlike the last resident, Alex isn’t a chef,” says Optimism BH Creative Director Todd Eisner. “But he genuinely loves Habit Charburgers, so it was our job to make sure that enthusiasm was captured in our content.” The Double Play Menu is available at participating Habit locations nationwide beginning September 16 for a limited time. Exverus has been Habit's media agency of record since August 2025, as reported by ADWEEK. Nations Restaurant News and MediaPost spread word of the campaign launch. Stay tuned for the last residency announcement, coming later this year! For more media buying tips, campaigns, and agency news; subscribe to our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter here.

How to make deliberate, intelligence-driven decisions about where and when to show up Every growth-stage brand eventually reaches the same inflection point: the market gets crowded, competitor budgets get bigger, and the playbook that worked last year starts showing its age. How can you get prepared? The insights here come from campaigns we've run for challenger brands in real competitive environments, from protein nutrition to streaming entertainment to fast casual dining. A common lesson threads through all of it: Brand positioning that is driven by competitive insights, gains market share while maintaining brand equity, and holds steady when competitors move is the way to earn to long-term customer loyalty. Learn tested and proven methods of outsmarting the competition with agility, brand positioning, and creativity. Competitive insights: Turn collection into action Most brands we work with already have competitive intelligence. They have the Pathmatics or MediaRadar login, the share-of-voice dashboard refreshed weekly, or the SEMrush keyword export sitting in someone's Dropbox. What they don't have is a decision framework that turns that data into a better media plan than they'd have built without it. Data collection is easy, but real leverage comes from what you do with it. Your competitive intelligence should answer 4 questions: Where can we be over-indexed, not just where are we behind? The instinct is to find competitive gaps and close them. For challenger brands, this is almost always the wrong move. Pick three or four channels where you can meaningfully outperform the competition and commit there. Trying to match a bigger competitor everywhere means losing everywhere. When should we show up (not just where)? Most brands look at channel mix and ignore timing entirely. If your largest competitor goes dark in Q1 every year, that's not a clear opening. An audience still in-market, and you're the only voice in the room. What are their creative signals saying? If a competitor has been running the same video concept for six months, they've hit on something that works. Find out why! Are they tapping into price, lifestyle, or a specific audience? That's strategy intelligence, not just channel intelligence. Which gaps are actually traps? Not every white space is an opportunity. Competitors often leave a channel because it isn't working. An under-utilized channel in your category is only worth pursuing if your own signals support it. Gain market share without a price war Brands increasingly want to conquest competitors through paid media, but many end up in a CPC arms race that inflates costs on both sides and moves no one's market share. Paid Search conquesting is notorious for starting bidding wars, which can threaten brand visibility and rising CPC costs for everyone involved. The brands gaining real ground are winning on presence, relevance, and timing. Here's how we think about category conquesting from a paid media standpoint: Show up where purchase decisions happen, not where keywords live The highest-leverage conquesting channel right now isn't Google, but retail media. 50% more retail media networks are offering competitive conquesting this year than last year, per EMARKETER. RMNs let you reach verified competitor purchasers using first-party purchase data, right when the consumer is in purchase mode. Find one or two retail media networks where your category lives, run a test targeting category keywords first, then add competitor audience targeting on top. However, if your brand has no retail distribution, then programmatic audience conquesting via competitor brand affinity segments is your primary lever. Programmatic can target the actual locations of competitors, geofence their events, and retarget for weeks afterward. Challenger brands, audit your brand defense before your next offense. Pull a search impression share report for your own brand terms. If competitors are capturing a meaningful share, strengthen your branded keyword bids before spending on conquesting. For market-leading brands, this should be your primary competitive paid media focus, not conquesting. Maintain brand positioning when competitors move in When a wave of challengers flood the shelf, the reactive instinct is to match their spend, defend every keyword, or drown them out on social. That path burns budget on a war of attrition, and challengers with lower awareness always have more to gain from the chaos than you do. The stronger play is to already have the infrastructure that matters: retail presence, brand equity, and media that keeps working when the category gets loud. When a competitor makes a big move, the question to ask yourself isn't 'How do we respond?' It's: 'Where have we already earned an advantage, and how do we extend it?’ CASE STUDY: PREMIER PROTEIN UNDER PRESSURE When a stampede of protein trendhoppers hit the market in 2025, Premier Protein didn't try to outspend the field. Instead, we developed a first-to-market Social Reach ad unit that delivered existing vertical video creative across the open web at half the cost-per-view of Meta. In combining that with a precise retail media strategy, CTV, Audio, and Search; Premier Protein built enough brand equity and presence that they could absorb the pressure and prevail. Going dark is a gift to your competitors Going dark on media sometimes gets framed as financial discipline, when really, it's a donation to your competitors. When a brand pulls back because of budget pressure, post-season fatigue, or new leadership it instantly loses share of voice. More importantly, it hands competitors a cleaner media environment, lower CPMs, and an audience all to themselves. Research from WARC confirms what we've seen firsthand: Regaining market share and brand equity after going dark is more costly and difficult than maintaining them with even modest investment. We've lived through this with a CPG client that came off a record-breaking sales season and then went dark for five months. During that window, consumer price sensitivity increased and competitors moved in. When the client resurfaced, it had lost 26% of annual revenue. Brand awareness and consideration were still intact — but last-touch conversion had collapsed because consumers could no longer differentiate this brand from a cheaper competitor. The instinct to pause often comes from treating advertising as a cost to cut rather than an investment to protect. And there's a second, quieter risk: leaning into short-term promotions to hit profit targets while dark on media trains consumers to wait for a discount, weakening brand value even as it appears to stabilize revenue. Even for brands with genuinely seasonal products, the right move is to define the minimum-presence threshold that keeps your brand in the game while competitors fund their own recovery later. BRAND POSITIONING ACTION ITEMS → Know your moat before you need it. Audit your retail presence, search share, and audience segments now. When competitive pressure spikes, you need to know where you're strong before you're forced to defend it. → When budget cuts are unavoidable, protect brand spend first. Performance spend has nowhere to perform without it. → Monitor SOV during slow spend periods. If your share is dropping while competitors' grows, the cost of the cutback is already showing up in the data. This piece originally appeared in our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter. For more tips, campaigns, and agency news; subscribe for free here. AI Disclosure: We use AI models to quickly consolidate information from top industry sources and combine it with our real-world expertise. Every word drafted is carefully reviewed, edited, and confirmed by human eyes and hands for accuracy and quality. All information on exverus.com has been executive-approved and is updated daily.

When it comes to loyalty, think long-term, not last-click Key Takeaways Fewer than 1 in 4 customers say genuine brand affection is why they stay loyal — Razorfish research calls this gap the "loyalty deficit," and it's built on function (product, checkout, price, switching cost), not points. First-party data captured during a tentpole campaign has a short shelf life; brands that build segmented retargeting and lookalike audiences in the first 14 days after a spike outperform those who wait for the quarter-end report. Retail media networks (Amazon, Walmart Connect, Sam's Club Connect) already have the infrastructure to treat existing customers differently from prospects — most brands are paying for that capability without activating it. Media mix modeling is shifting from a rearview-mirror reporting tool to a forward-looking decision engine, but only 28% of marketers say their org is effective at turning MMM insights into action — and retention is the KPI most often left out of the model until it's too late. Learn tested and proven methods of outsmarting the competition with agility, brand positioning, and creativity. There’s a self-serving story many marketers tell themselves: that repeat customers keep coming back out of genuine affection for the brand. But new research from Razorfish shows that fewer than 1 out of 4 customers agree. That gap is called the loyalty deficit, and it’s costing brands more than they know. What drives customer loyalty in 2026? The answer is less romantic and more pragmatic than brands might think: whether the product works whether checkout is painless whether the price makes sense, and whether switching to a competitor feels like effort they don't want to spend. Discounts haven't lost their pull, but they've become the baseline, not the differentiator. According to the Razorfish data, the benefits gaining ground now are things like: getting first access to a drop being treated like a VIP, or receiving support during an actual day of need, not just a birthday email. Loyalty, in other words, is being built more in how a brand treats people when it counts than in how many points they've stacked up. Exverus' Director of Retail Media Jason Giammona speaks at the 2026 Brand Innovators Future of Retail & Commerce conference. And that value doesn't have to live inside one brand's four walls, either. More than half of consumers say the strongest perks are the ones that work across categories entirely — a coffee loyalty program that also gets you airline miles, or a coalition wallet like Fetch that pools value across retailers. That's real headroom for challenger brands that can't out-discount a category leader but can out-partner one. One word of caution: as brands lean on AI to personalize these experiences, execution quality matters. Razorfish's research found that AI can just as easily damage the relationship as deepen it — the differentiator is whether the technology still feels like it's coming from a person who gets you, not a script or a bot. The Habit x LA Dodgers partnership is an excellent example of instilling brand loyalty by integrating into a city's culture. Read how we did it! How can I build customer loyalty into a media plan? Audit your loyalty program against the "loyalty deficit" lens — are you offering tangible, functional value, or leaning on brand-affinity messaging consumers don't actually credit? Gather first-party data and turn it into long-term loyalty. Pilot one soft-perk benefit (early access, VIP service recovery, a milestone-adjacent empathy touch) alongside your existing discount structure. Evaluate one cross-brand or coalition partnership opportunity that could extend perceived value without eroding margin. How to preserve consumer attention post-campaign Your tentpole media campaign brought you something valuable: real first-party data captured at a moment of high intent - who clicked, on what product or category, in which channel. It’s the accuracy of that data, not just the volume of it, that makes first-party data so useful for precise retargeting and lookalike modeling as third-party cookies degrade. We know loyalty initiatives need to go beyond points and create memorable experiences consumers really care about. But that starts with what you do in the two weeks right after the spike. Day 0-1: Build the custom audience before the spike cools. Push spike-engaged users (site visitors, retail media ad clickers, DSP-served impressions) into a dedicated retargeting segment in your DSP, split by product or category clicked - not one blended pool. A blended audience gets generic creative; a segmented one gets creative aligned with what they actually looked at. Day 2-5: Retarget on the channel where intent was highest, then layer DSP and paid social around it. Sponsored search on Amazon or Walmart converts the highest-intent segment fastest; DSP Display and Paid Social extend reach to the browsers who didn't purchase yet. Day 5–7: Build the lookalike in parallel, not after. Use the same spike segment to seed a prospecting lookalike audience. The point about first-party data accuracy applies directly here: a lookalike built off real, spike-captured behavior outperforms one built off broader historical data. Day 7–14: Shift paid budget from spike-segment retargeting to loyalty-program promotion. This matters because willingness to trade data for value is real and growing. Deloitte's research found that 89% of Gen Z and 87% of millennials surveyed are willing to share personal information in return for more personalized offers or experiences. This is the window to promote loyalty or rewards incentives tailored to each segment and the category they engaged with, not a generic program ad to everyone. A one-night event and a month-long tournament are fundamentally different math problems — here's how to plan for each. Retail media: The overlooked loyalty channel Retail media networks (RMNs) have loyalty infrastructure already built in: Amazon's Brand Tailored Promotions, Walmart Connect's shopper segments, paid social suppression and sequencing, and programmatic retargeting all let you treat existing customers differently from prospects, inside the same media buy you're already running. And Walmart’s recent restructuring, which aligns Walmart Connect with Sam’s Club Connect for shared capabilities, champions the membership model as a persistent, relationship-based view of customers rather than a series of one-off transactions. It means retailers can now see not only what a customer bought, but what ads they were exposed to, how they engaged, what they did next, and how their patterns emerge over time. These first-party data points form the foundation for repeat purchases and lifetime value, not just campaign-level ROAS. That’s golden for brands, as RMNs are quietly becoming loyalty engines informing long-term brand equity, not just immediate performance. If your team is still treating every impression as a single-touch acquisition moment, you’re paying for infrastructure you’re not using. How can I build customer loyalty using retail media networks? Start with a customer analysis that compares the cost and value of acquiring a new-to-brand customer against the cost and value of retaining a brand loyalist. From there, identify which paid media channels in your current mix are being used exclusively for acquisition, and map out retention audiences that could be activated instead. Apply a framework for sequencing paid media touchpoints to existing customers based on purchase history and lifetime value tier, rather than treating all retargeting as one undifferentiated pool, and evaluate ]the RMN's closed-loop measurement capabilities to ensure no retention-focused spend is left on the table. Predictive analytics and big-picture insights make marketing mix modeling tools invaluable to brand marketers of all industries in 2026 and beyond. Media mix modeling (MMM) as loyalty engine Most teams treat media mix modeling (MMM) as a rearview mirror: run the campaign, wait for the quarter to close, then let the model tell you what worked. But EMARKETER's Media Mix Modeling Trends 2026 report (to which Exverus's own VP of Analytics Joshua Edelman contributed) confirms that gap is now the industry's biggest measurement constraint. MMM is evolving from a reporting tool into a decision engine, but most marketers aren't ready for that shift. Only 28% of marketers say their organization is very effective at converting MMM insights into action! That's likely because they’re thinking of MMM after a campaign, rather than before. EMARKETER's report shows marketers running MMM reports sporadically instead of timing them strategically. EMARKETER'S report shows marketers running MMM reports sporadically, instead of timing them strategically. The mismatch shows up hardest in customer retention strategies. Acquisition spend gets modeled aggressively because the feedback loop is fast. Retention rarely gets the same treatment — the payback is slower, the attribution murkier — so it gets planned by instinct, or worse, left out of the model entirely until someone asks why churn spiked after a tentpole event. That's backwards. As EMARKETER reports, the optimal modeling cadence depends on the decision being made, which means if retention is a KPI you’re seeking in Q4, it needs to be in the model before Q4, not reconstructed from Q3's numbers after the fact. Before you build your holiday retention budget, model it. Before you brief your loyalty program refresh, size it against your other channels in the same tool you'd use to defend a paid social increase. MMM done right doesn't just tell you retention worked — it tells you how much to put behind it before you needed it to. How do I model customer retention strategies in MMM? Add retention/loyalty as a standing line item in your MMM inputs now, ahead of Q4 planning — not as a post-hoc addition. Set your modeling cadence to match your decision calendar: quarterly retention decisions need quarterly-relevant model inputs, not just annual reporting. And require a documented expected payback for loyalty spend the same way you would for any acquisition channel — no more "soft" budget lines. For more media buying tips, campaigns, and agency news; subscribe to our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter here. AI Disclosure: We use AI models to quickly consolidate information from top industry sources and combine it with our real-world expertise. Every word drafted is carefully reviewed, edited, and confirmed by human eyes and hands for accuracy and quality. All information on exverus.com has been executive-approved and is updated daily.

5 ways the top brands stay evergreen and top-of-mind all year round What is seasonal variation? Advantages and disadvantages of seasonal patterns 5 ways to overcome seasonality in marketing Expand product offerings Market repositioning Subscription models Live experiences Plan ahead What is seasonal variation? Flowers for Mother's Day, new cars for Christmas, costumes for Halloween -- some products really sprout with their season, right? Seasonality is an important consideration for marketers in terms of predicting demand, planning sales, and measuring campaigns. But major fluctuations in cash flow can make it difficult to plan and sustain the business’s finances throughout the year. And consumers can easily forget about your brand during off-seasons, undoing all the hard work you’ve put into building your brand equity already! So some brands are working to make their product sales less seasonal and more evergreen to keep the growth steady all year long. This is called a seasonality strategy. Source: FasterCapital Advantages & disadvantages of seasonality Advantages Built-in consumer demand Plenty of time to plan a campaign Excellent customer acquisition opportunities Disadvantages Instability of cash flow More competition = higher overhead Risk of too much leftover product Whether you want to smooth out the fluctuations in your sales throughout the year or just weather the ups and downs more efficiently, a few similar guidelines can help. Deep market research into your target audience segmented by location, demographics, and media consumption habits is crucial to understanding your consumers’ needs and meeting them without wasting ad spend. Here are a few ideas from top brands you could employ to mitigate the impact of seasonal cycles on your business! 5 ways to overcome seasonality in marketing Expand product offerings UGG, known for its wintery fur boots, has launched a new line of sandals and Mary Janes for spring with a global ad campaign called Big Spring Energy, featuring popular musicians enjoying fun in the sun. Canada Goose clothing (another winter staple) is adding T-shirts, rain boots, and polos to its repertoire of heavy parkas to catch outdoor adventurers all year long. Market repositioning Expanding product offerings isn't the only way to reduce seasonal patterns. Le Creuset promotes their high-end Dutch ovens for summer barbecues as well as winter stews, expanding the perceived utility of their existing product line. Market repositioning offers several advantages over product diversification: Lower investment costs (no new product development required) Maintains brand focus and identity Leverages existing manufacturing capabilities Builds additional value into products customers already recognize Strengthens the core brand proposition of versatility and quality Media's role in positioning your brand amid a competitive market Subscription models Setting up steady revenue streams, as FabFitFun and Dollar Shave Club have masterfully demonstrated with their monthly delivery boxes, saves money and automates loyalty. These brands didn't just create subscription boxes; they fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with their categories, delivering some serious benefits to their business goals, like: Predictable cash flow. By generating consistent revenue, companies can forecast with confidence, managing inventory and staffing needs with surgical precision throughout the year. Frictionless ordering. Subscription club members don’t have to decide or remember to re-order products each month – products simply arrive on schedule, creating an “always-on” relationship that transcends the calendar. Lower acquisition costs. Rather than repeatedly spending to attract customers during peak seasons, subscription-based companies invest in retention strategies that maintain value year-round—a much more efficient approach to sustainable growth. 4. Live experiences Build immersive, experiential activations that let customers (current and future) see, touch, and feel the brand in a memorable way. These tentpole events help you set the pace of growth, not the weather. “Pre-market testing can help brands fine-tune in-store activations to make a real impact. By testing designs, messaging, and displays in advance, brands can be sure they’re creating experiences that genuinely engage and resonate with consumers beyond the usual seasonal rush.” - EMARKETER 5. Use consumer behavioral data to plan ahead While some fluctuation of sales throughout the year is inevitable, your business isn't beholden to them. Gather historical data and analyze search keyword trends to anticipate highs and lows well in advance, so your audience already has you in mind (and not your competitor!) when the rush comes. Conduct competitive analyses, too, so you know which media channels your competitors are running on, and find the untapped whitespace. For example, when media planning for Amazon Prime Day or Prime Big Deals Day, our Premier Protein team knows the category giants will load up on Amazon Ads. So, instead of wasting ad dollars trying to compete, they start elsewhere for brand discovery (like clickable social ads or Reddit threads) and build a clear path to the Amazon product pages. It really works! Planning media for the Super Bowl is very different from the World Cup. Learn how to plan one-night bursts and monthlong tournaments alike. Exverus is now offering more predictive keyword insights through our proprietary tools. Reach out to us if you'd like to conduct these analyses for assessing opportunities and outsmarting your competition, no matter the season. Plan ahead with long-term media strategies in mind so your brand can thrive, rain or shine. For more media buying tips, campaigns, and agency news, join our free weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter. AI Disclosure: We use AI models to quickly consolidate information from top industry sources and combine it with our real-world expertise. Every word drafted is carefully reviewed, edited, and confirmed by human eyes and hands for accuracy and quality. All information on exverus.com has been executive-approved and is updated daily.

Major moments aren't one-size-fits-all; that's how media budget gets wasted Jump to: How to build a media plan for tentpole events How to retain customers after a marketing campaign Key Takeaways: Tentpole events aren't one-size-fits-all. A single-day moment like the Super Bowl calls for a concentrated burst strategy, while a multi-week event like the World Cup calls for a flighting strategy that spreads budget and adapts creative as the event unfolds. Classification should happen before budget does. Sorting a tentpole by duration and format is the first step in the planning process, and skipping it is the most common reason tentpole media plans underperform. A tentpole budget works best in three phases. Structuring spend across a lead-up period, a peak period, and a wind-down period turns a lump sum into an actual media plan, with tentpole dollars layered on top of an always-on baseline rather than pulled from it. Retention planning starts on day one, not after the event ends. The first-party data captured during a tentpole spike becomes the foundation for retargeting, lookalike audiences, and loyalty-program promotion in the weeks that follow. Intro Brands often lump "tentpole event" into one bucket and "always-on media" into another. But in reality, a single-night moment and an extended, multi-week event call for distinct approaches to investment, audience, and messaging. Treating them the same is a quick way to waste your advertising budget. Take the two biggest sports moments of the year, for example: The Super Bowl is a reach-and-buzz play — one night, with a single 30-second spot now running $8–10 million. The World Cup is a frequency-and-flighting play — 104 matches across 39 days in 2026, giving brands far more time to spread budget, read what's resonating by the second weekend, and optimize in real time. That distinction should drive your channel mix, not just your creative. Below is a step-by-step framework for building a tentpole media plan that meets the moment and how to preserve customer attention and loyalty after the campaign spike. Learn tested and proven methods of outsmarting the competition with agility, brand positioning, and creativity. How to build a media plan for tentpole events Step 1: Classify the event before you assign budget Before a dollar moves, classify the tentpole by duration and format: Single-day reach plays (Super Bowl, product launch day, a flash sale) need a burst strategy: concentrated spend, broad awareness channels, and creative built to land in one shot. Multi-week frequency plays (World Cup, back-to-school, holiday) need a flighting strategy: budget spread across the window, room to shift spend toward what's converting, and a plan for how creative evolves as the event progresses. A tentpole event media plan isn't one-size-fits-all. They need different strategies, and skipping this classification step is the most common reason tentpole plans underperform. Step 2: Set your objective & learn where the attention is going It's tempting to jump straight from "what event is coming up" to "what channels should we use." But it's crucial to first align on what outcomes you're aiming for (drive immediate conversions, build awareness that pays off later, or a mix in sequence) and gather audience insights. Behavior shifts during tentpole moments — people research, browse, and shop differently than they do in a normal week. Gather market and audience insights, like: category trends platform usage data during similar events first-party data on consumer buying habits content viewing preferences You'll want to make sure you're putting these heavy-up dollars right where your target audience's attention will likely be. With third-party cookies on life support, it's imperative that brands target audiences based on the media they consume, not personal data. Step 3: Choose your channel mix to match the timeline Once you know which type of event you're planning for, what your goals are, and what your audience is looking for, build the channel mix around it. For extended tentpoles, social isn't just an amplifier; it's the heart of the campaign. During Qatar 2022, FIFA's social engagement jumped 448% over 2018, generating 93.6 million posts. Planning for an extended event means shifting budget toward creator-driven, real-time reactive content, not just setting a campaign live and letting it run. Creative should be built to evolve here too: lock a strong opening concept, but leave room to iterate as you learn what's resonating by the second week. For shorter, high-intensity moments, a typical linear/CTV split should lean mostly streaming, with linear layered back in specifically for the tentpole window itself. Creative for these moments is usually locked before launch, since there's no window to react and re-cut mid-event. Step 4: Choose a budget-allocation framework With retail media, social, and search all competing for the same budget line, "how much goes where?" is the question most teams get stuck on. There's no universal split, but three proven approaches can inform your thinking: Content-focused: Meet shoppers where they're discovering, not just deciding. Deloitte's 2026 back-to-school research found that 75% of Gen-Z parents and 46% of millennial parents plan to use social media in their shopping journey this year. Product-focused: Let retail media do the closing. Lean into sponsored search on Amazon, Walmart, and Target, layering in event-specific long-tail keywords rather than just your category term. This is where purchase intent is highest, so it's the natural home for dollars earmarked to convert rather than build awareness. Leading with entertainment and letting the product follow naturally, rather than opening with product specs, tends to outperform during discovery-heavy windows. Blended: Plan for click-and-mortar, not a straight line. Shopping now bounces between digital discovery and in-store pickup or vice versa. A rigid, linear allocation model doesn't reflect how people actually shop around a tentpole moment. The right mix depends on your product, your audience, and how much of your tentpole revenue needs to come from immediate conversion versus long-term brand equity. Learn how to map out customer journeys based on how your audience really shops. Step 5: Structure the budget spend in phases A tentpole budget shouldn't be a single lump sum with a start and end date. Even a simple plan benefits from three phases: a lead-up period to build audience and awareness a peak period covering the event itself, and a wind-down period to capture retention value before attention moves on. Deciding how spend shifts across those three phases (ideally before the plan goes live, not while it's running) is what turns a tentpole budget into an actual media plan instead of just a number. Step 6: Protect your always-on baseline None of the above replaces always-on media. Consistency and retargeting are still what build brand equity over time. The smart move is to maintain a steady baseline in high-intent channels like retail media and search, with tentpole spend layered on top when a real moment justifies it. Add tentpole spend on top of that baseline rather than pulling from it. For extended events, treat the shift toward social and creator content as a genuine reallocation, not a minor mix adjustment. Pairing tentpole investment with brand lift studies and incrementality testing is what actually proves the spend moved the business, rather than just coincided with a sales bump you'd have seen anyway. Step 7: Plan for retention from day one Consider long-term customer loyalty from the beginning of your planning period, not as a follow-up thought once the event ends. You don’t want all this spend to go to waste when the event ends! Gather first-party data to form the foundation for repeat purchases and customer retention down the road. Build customer retention strategies into your paid media plans from the outset to build lifetime value. How to retain customers after a marketing campaign Your tentpole media campaign brought you something valuable: real first-party data captured at a moment of high intent - who clicked, on what product or category, in which channel. It’s the accuracy of that data, not just the volume of it, that makes first-party data so useful for precise retargeting and lookalike modeling as third-party cookies degrade. We’ve talked before about customer retention strategies that go beyond loyalty points and create memorable experiences consumers really care about. But what data are you building those plans off of? Here’s how to use your first-party data to prevent customer churn: Day 0-1: Build the custom audience before the spike cools Push spike-engaged users (site visitors, retail media ad clickers, DSP-served impressions) into a dedicated retargeting segment in your DSP, split by product or category clicked - not one blended pool. A blended audience gets generic creative; a segmented one gets creative aligned with what they actually looked at. Days 2-5: Retarget on the channel where intent was highest ...then layer DSP and paid social around it. Sponsored search on Amazon or Walmart converts the highest-intent segment fastest; DSP Display and Paid Social extend reach to the browsers who didn't purchase yet. Days 5–7: Build the lookalike in parallel, not after Use the same spike segment to seed a prospecting lookalike audience. The point about first-party data accuracy applies directly here: a lookalike built off real, spike-captured behavior outperforms one built off broader historical data. Days 7–14: Shift paid budget from spike-segment retargeting to loyalty-program promotion Deloitte's research found that 89% of Gen Z and 87% of millennials surveyed are willing to share personal information in return for more personalized offers or experiences. This is the time to promote loyalty or rewards incentives tailored to each segment and the category they engaged with, not a generic program ad to everyone. For more media buying tips, campaigns, and agency news; subscribe to our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter here. AI Disclosure: We use AI models to quickly consolidate information from top industry sources and combine it with our real-world expertise. Every word drafted is carefully reviewed, edited, and confirmed by human eyes and hands for accuracy and quality. All information on exverus.com has been executive-approved and is updated daily.

Outmaneuver the competition by marketing your brand through exciting, less cluttered channels. Popular advertising channels like CTV, e-commerce, paid search, and paid social media can be noisy and cluttered with competition. How can your brand possibly stand out without the biggest media budget? Adding alternative, experiential marketing plays to a paid media mix help brands to stand out from the crowd and reach people in exciting, memorable ways. There's a shift happening toward IRL events; people are hungry for community and friction. Brands that think outside the screen and meet consumers in the real world are building memorability and long-term loyalty. Jump to: What is alternative marketing? What are some examples? What are the pros & cons of alternative marketing? How do you measure the outcomes of alternative marketing campaigns? How do you integrate alternative marketing into an omnichannel media strategy? What is alternative marketing? Alternative marketing involves any media channel or tactic outside the traditional advertising mainstays of TV, Radio, and Print including out-of-home, experiential, cinematic, and guerrilla marketing. One theme has emerged clearly this year: bigger and more technologically dazzling doesn't mean more effective. The real differentiator is coherence: whether an experience emerges from what a brand stands for, or whether a logo has simply been applied on top of it. What are some examples of alternative advertising? The creative possibilities are endless, but a few effective examples include: Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) Media Buying DOOH inventory programmatically (Programmatic Out-of-Home, or pDOOH) lets advertisers trade impressions in real time through demand-side platforms, layering in dynamic creative optimization, 3D creative, and hyperlocal, weather-triggered messaging that integrates with retail media for a halo effect. When we took over Times Square with Annie Leibovitz's portraits for The Chosen: Last Supper, the DOOH media activation worked in harmony with the campaign's digital, video, and earned media strategies to lift brand awareness by 4.6x the Entertainment category norms! And most importantly, The Chosen: Last Supper sold 6.1MM tickets, grossing $50MM in theaters and setting a new record for the brand. Read more about the global campaign that drove major box office revenue! Experiential Marketing Ads can be more than just visuals; they can be fully immersive experiences. Whether it's a pop-up event, a branded installation, or an interactive campaign, experiential marketing brings people together in the physical world, where they can touch, feel, and sense the brand in a tangible way. These activations explode on social media, lead to higher brand recall, and instill customer loyalty. Strategic organic and paid media efforts also lead to more earned media coverage. Rather than simply sponsoring the local baseball team, Habit chose to set up shop inside Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and make a nearby restaurant location into an official fanbase before and after games. This helps consumers feel like less like - well, consumers, and more like participants in a local, cultural experience. Read more about the Habit x LA Dodgers partnership that incorporated DOOH & experiential marketing. Contests, Sweepstakes, & Giveaways In a cookie-deprecated world, few tactics get a consumer to willingly hand over their information faster than the chance to win something. Entrants opt in, share their contact or preference data, and often generate organic reach by tagging friends to boost their odds. The mechanic also travels well, living just as easily inside a DOOH activation, a social campaign, or an in-store display. Here's an example of a successful contest we ran for Stella & Chewy's in 2023 that collected zero-party data and led to an 84% surge in revenue directly attributed to media! Cinematic Advertising Imagine your ad on the big screen, impossible to ignore, in a theater near you. Despite taking a hit during the pandemic, cinematic advertising is clawing its way back with digital strategies and box office hits, providing a much-needed jolt. The CPM for cinematic advertising is competitive with CTV and avoids many of the problems in search and social like signal loss and data privacy. An Exverus client who advertised in-cinema increased unaided brand awareness by 12x as a result of the campaign! Guerrilla Marketing These tactics show up in unexpected places, sneaking up on people out in the wild -- think pop-up art installations, flash mobs, interactive street games, or messages appearing on unlikely canvasses like sidewalks and buildings. Pardon the obvious pun here, but there was a truly "guerrilla" campaign for the latest Planet of the Apes movie in 2024: What are the pros & cons of alternative marketing? Thinking outside the box has its advantages: alternative and experiential media build lasting brand recall, deepen affinity, and drive measurable purchase intent, especially when a brand designs the conditions for an experience rather than a one-way message. Giving audiences some agency over what to explore, share, or post is what makes an activation travel, and creator amplification often turns one activation into millions of earned impressions. The trade-offs are real too. Event budgets are climbing across B2B and consumer categories, so more brands compete for the same limited windows of attention. A highly produced, highly branded activation can still feel hollow without something distinctive to say. These channels also demand more lead time and cross-functional coordination than a standard digital buy, and CMOs are increasingly asked to deliver disruptive, immersive work while staying fiscally responsible — a few massive tentpole moments giving way to more, smaller, sharper bets. A single-night moment and an extended, multi-week event call for distinct approaches to investment, audience, and messaging. How do you measure the success of alternative marketing campaigns? While it's true that alternative advertising campaigns are less directly attributable to sales than performance marketing channels like e-commerce, there are definite ways to measure their impact. Effective ways to quantify impact include: Brand lift studies, before-and-after surveys, and focus groups to track recall, favorability, and purchase intent Dwell time, foot traffic, and heat-mapping to see which elements of an activation actually earn attention, plus trackable coupons and app downloads tied to that specific activation Marketing mix modeling (MMM) and AI-powered predictive analysis to connect activations to downstream conversions, and increasingly to predict where and what an activation should say before it launches Earned media value and branded search lift. Our Times Square campaign for The Chosen drove branded search to 3.8MM in a single month. Experiential agency Six+One's $2,000 trashcan activation in New York generated an estimated $28 million in earned media! The bigger shift: start with the outcome a client wants and build measurement backward from there, rather than treating attendance as the goal. How do you integrate alternative marketing into an omnichannel media strategy? No earned or paid marketing tactic, traditional or otherwise, can yield steady, long-term growth in a bubble – they have to work together! A good media agency can help your brand build a holistic, omnichannel media plan that incorporates upper-funnel tactics like experiential activations or OOH with mid- and lower-funnel tactics like paid search and retail media, respectively. Focusing too narrowly on lower-funnel tactics at the expense of brand-building is a common trap known as short-termism. The immediate, traceable performance effects can be enticing, but without upper-funnel brand building in the mix, your audience won’t grow, and your business won’t either. Get your brand outside in the real world and create outstanding, memorable experiences for your customers. Show them a good time, and they'll stick with you. This piece originally appeared in our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter. For more tips, research, and analysis; subscribe for free here. AI Disclosure: We use AI models to quickly consolidate information from top industry sources and combine it with our real-world expertise. Every word drafted is carefully reviewed, edited, and confirmed by human eyes and hands for accuracy and quality. All information on exverus.com has been executive-approved and is updated daily.

Predictive analytics and big-picture insights make marketing mix modeling tools invaluable to brand marketers of all industries in 2026 and beyond. Can you predict the outcome of your brand marketing campaigns? Without the proper measurement tools, your media plan could feel like a (very expensive) shot in the dark. A 2022 McKinsey Global Survey found that only 17% of companies believe they can effectively measure marketing's impact on business outcomes. And with so many different retailers and media networks to reach customers, measuring the impact of your spending across platforms can be a nightmare! Fortunately, a suite of marketing mix modeling tools has recently emerged to help solve those problems more quickly and accurately. Learn tested and proven methods of outsmarting the competition with agility, brand positioning, and creativity. What is marketing mix modeling? Marketing mix modeling, also known as media mix modeling (MMM), is a sophisticated analytical method that provides a comprehensive, data-driven understanding of how different marketing channels contribute to overall brand growth. Unlike user-level attribution, MMM uses aggregated data to evaluate the effectiveness of different marketing channels while maintaining privacy compliance. Marketing Mix Modeling offers a comprehensive, data-driven understanding of how different marketing channels contribute to overall brand growth. For brands navigating an increasingly complex digital ecosystem, MMM is no longer a luxury—it's a strategic imperative. Talia Arnold, Cofounder of Exverus, explained onstage at MediaPost why MMM & incrementality testing are now table stakes in every media budget. How does AI power MMM? In 2025, several announcements brought new MMM solutions to the forefront, all led by AI. AI is revolutionizing MMM in several key ways, making it more accurate, efficient, and insightful. Here's how: 1. Handling complex data AI excels at processing massive datasets, including diverse data types like online behavior, social media sentiment, CRM data, and even weather patterns. This allows MMM to incorporate a wider range of factors influencing marketing performance. Traditional MMM often struggles with complex, non-linear relationships between marketing inputs and outcomes. AI, particularly machine learning, can model these intricate relationships more effectively, leading to more accurate results. 2. Improved accuracy and insights AI employs sophisticated algorithms like neural networks and Bayesian methods to identify patterns and relationships that traditional statistical methods might miss. This leads to more precise estimations of marketing channel effectiveness. AI can analyze data at a more granular level, providing insights into specific customer segments, campaigns, and even individual touchpoints. This allows marketers to understand which tactics are working best for whom and optimize accordingly. A study by Forrester Research indicates that AI-driven marketing tools can improve marketing efficiency by up to 40%, with predictive analytics significantly increasing conversion potential. 3. Enhanced efficiency and speed AI automates many aspects of MMM, from data cleaning and preprocessing to model building and interpretation. This significantly reduces the time and resources required for MMM analysis. AI enables real-time or near real-time MMM, allowing marketers to adjust campaigns on the fly based on the latest data and insights. This agility is crucial in today's dynamic marketing environment. 4. Predictive analytic capabilities AI can be used to forecast the impact of future marketing campaigns, enabling marketers to make data-driven decisions about budget allocation and channel selection. AI facilitates scenario planning by simulating the potential outcomes of different marketing strategies. This helps marketers identify the most promising approaches and mitigate risks. 5. Overcoming limitations of traditional MMM AI can more accurately model the long-term impact of marketing activities, such as brand building, by capturing adstock and carryover effects and can help address the complex challenge of attributing marketing outcomes to specific touchpoints across the customer journey. What is the difference between MMM and MTA? Marketing mix modeling (MMM) analyzes how various marketing elements collectively impact sales or other KPIs, while multi-touch attribution (MTA) identifies the specific contribution of each touchpoint in the customer journey. MMM relies on historical, aggregated data (like campaign budgets or overall sales figures) while MTA needs more granular, real-time data on individual user interactions. Learn more about how and when to use each analysis method below: What are the best marketing mix modeling tools? As with most things, it depends - on your needs, budget, and level of technical skill. Recent innovations in MMM tools are making it easier for advertisers to approach and understand statistical regression models. Keen Decision Systems Take, for example, the collaboration between retail data aggregator Crisp and MMM platform Keen Decision Systems. This partnership represents a significant leap forward, enabling CPG marketers to combine daily, store-level data from multiple retailers with advanced modeling techniques. The result? The ability to plan, measure, and adjust budget allocations in real-time with unprecedented precision. Resonate Insights Another standout tool our own analysts love is Resonate, an AI-powered data platform that goes beyond traditional analytics. By combining consumer data with machine learning, Resonate provides robust audience insights that go far deeper than surface-level demographics. Google's Meridian Meridian is an open-source MMM tool that measures full-funnel performance, integrating incrementality experiments, controlling for organic demand with the inclusion of search query volume data, and making video measurement more actionable by modeling reach and frequency. InsightMix reduces the time it takes our teams to develop MMM models from weeks to hours, and allows us to iterate through hundreds of model variants to maximize accuracy and relevance to real-world business impact. To ask our media experts how MMM or MTA can help manage your brand's ad budget more efficiently, shoot us a note using the form below! For more ad buying news and tips, join our free, weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter. AI Disclosure: We use AI models to quickly consolidate information from top industry sources and combine it with our real-world expertise. Every word drafted is carefully reviewed, edited, and confirmed by human eyes and hands for accuracy and quality. All information on exverus.com has been executive-approved and is updated daily.

Social media advertising continues to evolve as one of the most powerful tools for brand growth and customer acquisition. As we move into 2026, understanding where to allocate your social media advertising budget can mean the difference between breakthrough results and wasted spend. Key Components: Strategic platform selection based on verified audience insights and engagement patterns Scientific creative testing across social media channels to identify high-performing formats and messaging Regular performance analysis to optimize social media advertising spend allocation Agile budget management that shifts investment based on actual results rather than assumptions or trends Social media planning: A scientific approach A. Understand your audience Effective social media advertising strategy begins with understanding your audience's digital behavior. Optimizing your social media mix requires clearly mapping where your customers spend their online time and attention. For businesses without enterprise-level analytics platforms, we recommend two accessible approaches to inform social media advertising decisions: Customer research: Survey your existing customer base about their social media usage patterns, preferred platforms, and content consumption habits Platform analytics: Utilize native analytical tools within each social media platform. Meta's insights dashboard, for example, reveals engagement distribution between Instagram and Facebook audiences—providing clear direction for social media budget allocation. B. How to allocate your social media advertising budget At Exverus, we have refined a proven social media advertising rule-of-thumb through years of running campaigns for brands like Premier Protein, Theralogix supplements, and New Belgium Brewing: 60% Meta (Facebook and Instagram) 30% TikTok 10% Reddit or emerging platforms This distribution maximizes social media advertising ROI while maintaining agility for testing new opportunities as the landscape shifts. Platform-specific strengths Meta: The ROI champion Social media advertisers industry-wide agree that Meta is the strongest performer for your paid social return on investment (ROI). The platform's sophisticated targeting infrastructure, extensive user data, and conversion optimization tools make it the foundation of most successful social media advertising strategies. Instagram Reels beats TikTok on several key metrics, and Meta's ad capabilities are only getting stronger. Click to learn how. TikTok: A brand exploder TikTok has emerged as a social media advertising powerhouse for brand awareness campaigns. The platform offers unique ad placements that other social media advertising channels cannot match - including positioning alongside trending content, securing first-open placements, and appearing as the initial video users see upon launching the app. Although TikTok Shop was a powerful sales-driver in the holiday shopping season of 2025 for product-based brands, most brands see more success with TikTok as an awareness-builder, rather than a converter. Social media platforms are now brand discovery hubs, and search engines are now mid-funnel. Learn how to meet savvy consumers everywhere they search. Reddit: The community educator For brands with products requiring education or strong community engagement, Reddit represents an underutilized opportunity. The platform enables advertisers to integrate messaging within authentic user conversations and valuable community discussions. Reddit's keyword-based targeting is a significant advantage for social media marketing campaigns. This functionality mirrors Google Search capabilities and enables more cohesive cross-channel marketing strategies. TikTok has similarly introduced keyword targeting, further expanding strategic social media advertising options. Reddit has evolved from a niche forum into a marketing powerhouse, reshaping how consumers make decisions & how AI answers their questions. C. Measurement & Attribution Effective social media advertising requires rigorous measurement to understand what's working and where to optimize spend. Without proper tracking and analysis, even well-allocated budgets can fail to deliver maximum value. Essential Paid Social Metrics Different platforms and campaign objectives require different measurement approaches. For conversion-focused social media buying, track: Return on ad spend (ROAS): The revenue generated for every dollar invested in social media advertising Cost per acquisition (CPA): How much you're spending to acquire each customer through social media advertising Conversion rate: The percentage of users who take desired actions after engaging with your social media advertising ROAS and last-click metrics can be misleading because they capture a narrow slice of the journey, understating long-term brand impact. For brand awareness-building social media buying, especially on platforms like TikTok, monitor: Reach and impressions: How many unique users are seeing your social media advertising Engagement rate: Likes, comments, shares, and saves relative to impressions View-through rate: Completion rates for video-based social media advertising content Brand lift studies: Changes in brand awareness, consideration, and preference metrics Brand lift studies demonstrate the impact of your marketing on real brand growth over time. Attribution in Social Media Advertising Modern social media advertising measurement must account for complex customer journeys. Users rarely convert on first touch—they might discover your brand on TikTok, research on Reddit, and convert through an Amazon Display ad. Implement multi-touch attribution models that credit multiple social media advertising touchpoints along the conversion path. Digiday confirms that agencies large and small are using agile, new marketing mix modeling (MMM) tools to track how upper-funnel media leads to sales downstream. Platform-specific attribution windows (typically 1-day view, 7-day click for most social media advertising) provide baseline data, but cross-platform analytics tools offer more complete visibility into how your social media advertising channels work together. Predictive analytics and big-picture insights make marketing mix modeling tools invaluable to brand marketers of all industries in 2026 and beyond. Testing and Optimization Cycles Successful social media advertising programs establish regular measurement cadences: Weekly analysis: Identify trends, pause underperforming social media advertising creative, and scale winners Monthly reviews: Evaluate overall media strategy, test new platforms, and adjust budget allocation Quarterly planning: Reassess platform mix based on cumulative performance data This structured approach to social media advertising measurement ensures you're making data-informed decisions rather than relying on assumptions or outdated performance patterns. E. Case Studies & Examples Theralogix enters the Reddit chat In Q4 of 2024, our Reddit Ads brand campaign contributed to the supplement maker's +33% lift in web traffic and +634% lift in cross-network search! Click to read more below. Exverus' new Social Reach ad unit beats Meta's efficiency In 2025, Exverus partnered up with SeenThis to build a whole new ad unit called Social Reach, which splashes a brand's vertical video assets across Pubmatic's premium open web supply with zero additional production cost. Click to learn more below. Premier Protein was the first brand to test Social Reach and outperformed Meta Ads by 50% efficiency! 'The Chosen' integrates search & social to drive app downloads For TV's "The Chosen" mobile app campaign, we stitched Search and Social Media advertising initiatives together in a cohesive digital strategy that successfully drove nearly 1 million app downloads in 3 months at half the projected cost! Learn more below. To entice viewers, we teased behind-the-scenes footage, access to the stars, and app-exclusive trailers. In 2026 and beyond, the key to social media advertising success lies not in following industry trends, but in developing deep knowledge of where your specific audience engages and what creative approaches drive them to action. Based on insights from Inc. magazine's interview with Blake Anderson (founder, 10x) and Ryan Schuster, MBA (Director of Paid Search and Social, Exverus by Brainlabs). Original article: "How to Get the Most Out of Paid Social in 2026" by Annabel Burba, Inc., December 23, 2025. For more media buying tips, campaigns, and agency news, join our free weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter. AI Disclosure: We use AI models to quickly consolidate information from top industry sources and combine it with our real-world expertise. Every word drafted is carefully reviewed, edited, and confirmed by human eyes and hands for accuracy and quality. All information on exverus.com has been executive-approved and is updated daily.