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.

New research proves media is a marathon, not a sprint We've been saying for years that media buying is a marathon, not a sprint. And now, independent research strongly supports our philosophy of spreading media spend out over a longer period of time. 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? We've said it before: investing in paid media is like a 401K, not a penny stock. And it turns out, the market's catching up to the math. 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 game)? 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.

How our Megabrand ad campaign helped Voodoo Ranger outpace the craft beer field The Challenge: Competition brewing New Belgium Brewing's wild child, Voodoo Ranger, was facing a storm of competition from challenger brands crowding the craft beer category. The brand needed more than another standard media buy to defend Voodoo Ranger's spot at the top of the charts. They needed a full 360 campaign built to match the brand's edgy, adventurous identity at scale, across every channel where their audience actually spent time. The Strategy: An ad campaign on every screen New Belgium brought us in to bring that identity to life across a fully digital, 360 media campaign. Working with Voodoo Ranger's visually striking, edgy creative assets, designed by creative agency Fact & Fiction, we programmatically bought a carefully chosen mix of premium CTV, Snapchat, Reddit, YouTube, and other inventory as part of New Belgium's larger marketing effort. The Results: Mega beer sales! The Megabrand campaign surpassed all of New Belgium's goals for the year. Cross-channel ad awareness rose 44%, brand favorability rose 23%, and business sales grew 26% year-over-year, with the product line surpassing its full-year sales targets. Our work was recognized industry-wide. It won Best Alcoholic Beverage Marketing Campaign at the 2024 MediaPost OMMA Awards, and Adweek Media Plan of the Year for Best Use of Programmatic Media. Live Rangerously! About the Director As Associate Media Director at Exverus, Shelby’s media planning team (currently serving New Belgium & Bell's Brewing and Right Guard) combine fresh, creative ideas with sharp, precise data for industry-leading results. Shelby's work ethic and expertise have earned Adweek Media Plan of the Year, MediaPost OMMAs, & The Drum Awards. She previously ran media strategy for McDonald’s, Corona & Corona Hard Seltzer, plus entertainment properties across multicultural audiences. For more media buying news and tips, subscribe to our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter.

Exverus earned Gold at the 2025 Festival of Media North America Awards for "The Chosen: Indie Streams to Big Screens" The Challenge: It’s red carpet season in Hollywood, and all eyes are on the stars of Hollywood Boulevard premiering their new blockbusters. But could the next box office hit be an indie TV show…set 2,000 years ago? We proved it could! Led by Exverus VP of Media Planning & Strategy Tasha Day and Media Director Anna Elema, the planning and performance marketing teams behind the campaign engineered an entirely new model for the entertainment industry: Instead of movies starting in theaters then going home to streaming, we took an existing TV series and expanded it to movie screens. It was an unusual strategy; we didn’t have a dollar to waste. We had to build major anticipation to make Season 5’s theatrical debut successful! "It's exciting to be part of this unconventional way of bringing entertainment and content to people. I do think it very much could be the way of the future. It's shifting from traditional studios to making it about what the fans want, and they're showing (or they're proving) that they want it by investing in it." --Tasha Day, VP of Media Planning, Exverus by Brainlabs The Strategy: Infiltrate mainstream culture Our media strategy leveraged the show’s biggest strength: community. Community-building has been core to The Chosen’s business model from day one. Unlike traditional big-studio funding, they relied on a patchwork of individual contributions, nonprofits, licensing fees, and merch sales to keep the lights on. We knew video-driven media, featuring heart-stopping visuals everywhere fans gathered online, would be huge. But viewing platforms are fragmented, so measurement would be a challenge; and engaging with social media or an app does not equate to going out to the movies. We needed to bridge the gap. A job like this required a few influential people to rally the masses: Enter famed Vogue photographer Annie Leibovitz, who shot gorgeous portraits of the cast on set. With the help of NPRP Media, we took over Times Square & digital billboards around the world To maximize Leibovitz’s work in public, we planned our biggest digital out-of-home (DOOH) media activation ever: a Times Square takeover followed by multilingual billboards across the globe: Los Angeles, Rome, Madrid, Sao Paolo and more. Digital audio would be another exciting avenue for storytelling and calls-to-action; while interactive digital media builds would cultivate community and drive traffic. For fun and measurability, we designed immersive, shareable Snapchat lenses to make Gen Z fans get hands-on. The Results: A record-breaking year We catapulted awareness and fandom larger than we thought possible! And set a personal box office record in the process… Non-viewer awareness of the show increased 44%, to a whopping 72% in Season 5! DISQO brand lift studies showed an aided awareness level 4.6x Entertainment category norms. After the Times Square takeover, financial contributions to the show spiked significantly Variety, Yahoo!, IMDb, The Tonight Show w/Jimmy Fallon, The View, and other top-tier outlets featured the iconic strategy. And most importantly, "The Chosen: Last Supper" sold 6.1MM tickets, grossing $50MM in theaters to set a new record and putting the franchise at over $140MM in global lifetime revenue! Our omnichannel media plan reached beyond core audiences while expanding The Chosen as genre-breaking entertainment. We were even awarded Gold for Best Campaign by an Indie Agency at the 2025 Festival of Media: North America Awards! Watch the official campaign case video below: About the Indie Agency Award Festival of Media: North American Awards (FOMNA) was launched in 2017 and has significantly grown every year since. It recognizes, benchmarks and amplifies the best of the best media work from North America and Canada. The jury, featuring industry leaders from Google, The Coca-Cola Company, Meta, PepsiCo, Amazon, Microsoft, Mars, L’Oréal, and Audible, convened for the final round of judging to determine this year’s winners. The awards were announced live on Thursday, December 11th, 2025 in New York. See the full list of winners here. About the Director Anna Elema is a Media Planning Director at Exverus and CampaignUS' 2026 Media Planner/Buyer of the Year honoree. Currently overseeing full-funnel advertising strategy for smash TV hit 'The Chosen', Anna's 11 years growing Fortune 500 brands like MasterClass and Stella & Chewy's have earned Adweek Media Plans of the Year, MediaPost Planning & Buying Awards, and MediaPost OMMAs. She earned her degree in Psychology from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Wonder what we can do for your brand this year? Drop us a line below, and let's talk!

Key Takeaways: The Gotta Habit Meal Deals' share of total Habit sales in test markets rose 18.6% versus pre-campaign baseline, statistically significant at 99% confidence. Control markets with no media support showed no comparable lift, pointing to the campaign as a driver of the sales increase. Meta and Google Performance Max both delivered customer acquisition costs well below benchmark, indicating real customer growth from the plan's core channels. Habit Burger & Grill reported 7% system sales growth and 5% same-store sales growth in Q1 2026, one of its strongest quarters in recent years. The Challenge: Balance value with price In 2026, deal-seeking visits account for close to a third of all restaurant traffic - among the highest rates tracked in decades! Habit Burger & Grill felt that pressure directly. The brand needed a value offer strong enough to compete on price and built to protect the "Fresh Like That" positioning it had just introduced. Our media team built the ad campaign behind Habit's Q1 2026 Gotta Habit Meal Deals, a tiered $6, $8, and $10 bundle offer that ran across 15 states, spanning established California markets and newer expansion territory. We set out to prove something specific: that an ad campaign could move sales in a five-week window, in a category that was largely stuck. Creative agency Optimism BH designed the Gotta Habit ad campaign The Strategy: Measuring for causation We designed the campaign around a controlled incrementality study, running live inside the media flight itself. Sales performance in five key test markets running Gotta Habit Meal Deals was measured against comparable regions receiving no media support at all. That structure let us attribute any lift directly to the campaign. A full-funnel channel mix, balancing upper-funnel reach with lower-funnel conversion, supported the test while keeping the plan focused on long-term brand health and short-term sales simultaneously. The Results: Ad campaign proves its own value In just 5 weeks, the Gotta Habit Meal Deal's share of total Habit sales in test markets rose 18.6% above pre-campaign baseline, at 99% statistical significance. Meanwhile: Control markets with no media investment showed no comparable trend, which points to the campaign itself as a driver of that lift. Efficiency held up alongside the top-line number. Meta drove customer acquisition at a cost 77% below benchmark in California, while Google PMAX delivered a cost-per-click 65% below benchmark. Both signal real downstream customer growth from the plan's core channels. Our creative testing surfaced a genuine surprise: Music enthusiasts, an audience outside Habit's traditional fast-casual targeting, posted the strongest view-through rate of any segment tested, 8% above benchmark. That finding is now shaping how we think about audience expansion for Habit beyond the category's usual playbook. And the impact extended past the test markets: Habit's parent company, Yum! Brands, reported that the Habit division grew system sales 7% and same-store sales 5% in Q1 2026, one of the brand's strongest quarters in years! Why it matters Most fast casual brands running a deal can point to redemption counts or a short-term traffic bump. Fewer can show what an ad campaign actually contributed versus what would have happened anyway. Building a controlled test into a live, full-funnel ad campaign gave Habit a repeatable framework for evaluating future value plays against real, measured lift. About the Director Named Ad Age Media Planner of the Year in 2023, Georgia Schreiner brings 15 years of experience in marketing & advertising to her role as Media Director at Exverus by Brainlabs. She began her career at Havas Media Group in Chicago before relocating to Colorado and rising through the ranks of automotive marketing. In addition to her Advertising degree from University of Illinois, Georgia holds certifications from The Trade Desk Edge Academy, Google Ads Search, Meta Media Professionals, Amazon Sponsored Ads, and Insperity Leadership Training.

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.

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.

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.

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! 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AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude will soon collapse the customer journey into a single conversation, and brands need a full-funnel media strategy to own them. Key Takeaways: Declining click-through rates don't mean your marketing is failing — they may mean it's working. As AI Overviews and LLM answers absorb more of the discovery process, brands should track "share of model" (how often they're cited and mentioned inside AI-generated answers) alongside traditional share-of-voice metrics, rather than relying on website clicks as the primary success signal. Agentic commerce has moved from concept to measurable reality. GenAI-driven traffic to Amazon rose 3,000% during Prime Day 2026, and roughly 8% of consumers are already completing purchases directly within AI platforms like ChatGPT — early adoption numbers that are expected to climb as retailers deepen partnerships with AI providers. Brand building and performance marketing are no longer sequential — they have to run at the same time. When an LLM answers a product question, it's weighing brand mentions, website authority, customer reviews, and product data simultaneously, not moving a consumer through separate awareness and conversion stages. Full-funnel media strategy is now table stakes, not a long-term investment to "graduate" into. Consistency across search, product data, and retail listings determines whether AI models cite your brand at all. Because LLMs pull from multiple signals at once to generate a single answer, brands need aligned, specific, and accurate information across search content and retail product detail pages (PDPs) to be surfaced and recommended in AI-driven shopping conversations. Learn tested and proven methods of outsmarting the competition with agility, brand positioning, and creativity. On a hot, Arizona day in March 2026, Exverus VP of Performance Marketing Hillary Kupferberg (now Bram) took the stage to tell a roomful of marketers and media buyers: You're behind. She was talking about the dawn of AI shopping, or agentic commerce, a process in which consumers turn to AI chatbots like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity for product recommendations, and an AI shopping agent fills their basket. It's the future (no, the present reality) of e-commerce, and brand marketers need to adapt their marketing strategies quickly. When the whole product discovery-to-purchase pathway is collapsed into a single chatbot conversation, traditional advertising tactics like Paid Search driving clicks to a website become irrelevant. Let Hillary explain: Zero-click Search Marketing We're entering a world where better marketing produces worse-looking Search metrics. One of our CPG brands saw a 30% decline clicks to site but were actually winning and gaining share in AI overviews. Brands relying on website clicks today to measure their success are actually falling behind, and your marketing is looking worse. So, we need to measure differently. We all know the old terms of share of voice, but what we're quickly finding is that in order to win today, you actually need to be looking at share of model. Is your brand or your product being cited and mentioned in these LLMS? The reason this matters is, if we evaluate all these new forms of technology under our own old models, we're going to lose. Now we're marketing to AI and consumers. So we really are thinking about this differently today, rewriting success. And when we look at all the new new traffic sources, where are leads coming from? Is it ChatGPT? Is it Copilot? Is it Gemini? These things matter. Reddit is a huge source that's really powerful. For one of our brands, we were able to identify that Reddit is the third most visible domain on Google, and that's pulling into all of the AI Overviews. Agentic commerce On Amazon Prime Day, we saw a 3,000% increase of GenAI traffic to Amazon. That's huge! And we really entered a tipping point that is quickly transforming the commerce world. The point of sale is now inside the conversation. Discovery is happening within all of these conversations. And if you think about the first prompt you ever gave AI, "I need a new pair of sneakers" is very different than how I talk to AI now and likely you do, as well. Really in-depth prompts about exactly what type of hiking shoe I need, that it needs to fit in my carry-on, I want them to be waterproof, only in blue. These are the types of information that customers are giving; they're having deep conversations with AI to find the right products. They're not visiting your website, but ultimately what we're seeing with retailers and commerce partners actively partnering with OpenAI is the future of retail and e-commerce. Conversational AI is a new purchase channel. As of very recently, we can start to buy ads there. But even without paid media, this is a really important tool for your brands to be thinking about because AI is predicting, recommending, and ultimately completing the transactions all within that chat. The retailers, as they continue to partner with OpenAI, will have really strong purchase data that isn't happening on your brand site. And we see that people are really leaned in. 63% of users are doing this for research and discovery, and 53% take it a step further and compare products and prices. So everything from your search to your retail PDPs need to be specifically consistent and translate to the AI so the AI models can mention and cite your brands and your products when relevant. A full-funnel media approach When we talk about building a brand, we're really talking about creating authentic relationships, repeat purchases, and brand enthusiasts. But LLMs have collapsed the timeline. In the old world, you'd invest in brand awareness for months, watch awareness metrics climb, then capitalize on that brand equity through performance channels like retail media and search. Brand and performance were sequential. Now, they're simultaneous. When a consumer asks ChatGPT or Claude, "What's the best protein powder for weight loss?" the LLM is pulling from: your brand mentions your website authority your customer reviews and the specificity of your product data, all at once. It's not deciding between brand awareness and conversion intent; it's weighing credibility signals and purchase readiness in a single answer. If you've only invested in performance metrics (ROAS, conversion rates), you're invisible to the LLM. If you've only built brand awareness, you won't show up in the purchase recommendation. You need both operating as one scientific brain. That's not a nice-to-have anymore; that's table stakes. Actionable Takeaways I encourage you to save this slide because these are tangible things you can bring back to your organization to introduce new ways of measuring success in this agentic commerce world. And just remember that if your organization is still measuring clicks, you're a little bit behind. But the good news is we're here to help. FAQs about AI shopping Q: I loved your insight about Reddit and how brands could get some leverage there. Jay Walker Smith [of MediaPost] wrote a piece recently that the number one source of expert information on the LLMs is Reddit. Number two is Wikipedia. Is that dumbing down the expertise, and is there going to be kind of backlash for brands who are using LLMs for, how should I say, less than perfect information? A: Definitely. It's it really is the wild west. I can't predict what will happen, but I think it's a "both/and situation" between what's happening on Reddit and Wikipedia (more of that user-generated [content]), plus what the brand is putting out. So you have to do both to in order to succeed. And so it does take a lot to be commerce-ready and visible and consistent across many different touch points where the formats are different. How people want to consume the information is different, but brands that are paying attention to both I think will be ahead. Q. The relationship between AI and search is undeniable in terms of the level of disruption there. I'm curious what you're seeing in the ripples with programmatic and display as well, because if that whole behavior and model shifts where people aren't searching online, and we're not retargeting them, and going through that traditional funnel, what are the recommendations, or where do you see programmatic moving with AI now? A. I think programmatic will take a lot of signals from what we're seeing and learning honestly with search as new releases are happening, in terms of product, and what the actual ad formats available will be, and it'll change over time. Again, I don't think it's replacing what we've seen. A lot of fears around volume of search decreasing didn't actually come to play; volume of search is actually up, but how people are consuming and ultimately getting the information is just resulting in less clicks. So, what we're expecting in the programmatic space is even more innovation in terms of ad formats and similar results in terms of expectations around click-based performance. Q. I'm excited now that you said we will soon be making a purchase within an AI platform, and I'm just curious, can you share anything about like a personal purchase that you found very smooth through an AI platform? A. Definitely. Walmart is doing it really well. [Adoption] is low right now. We're at about 8% of people are actually transacting within ChatGPT. I think there's still concerns around adoption and trust. So, giving ChatGPT your credit card is the default, but actually you're giving Walmart your credit card. Purchases that I've made are pretty boring, but mostly in the grocery category. For further reference Watch Hillary's presentation video: MediaPost Live on YouTube. "The New Path from Discovery to Digital Shelf." March 2026. For more on personalization in AI shopping: EMARKETER. "How AI has remade product pages, discovery, and personalization." March 2026. For different retailers' offerings: ADWEEK. "Walmart and Target Are Battling to Show Up in AI Shopping Tools. Here's How Their Strategies Compare." March 2026. About the Author Hillary Bram is the VP of Performance Marketing at Exverus by Brainlabs where she holistically oversees the agency's robust retail media and e-commerce team, programmatic advertising, paid search, and paid social teams. Over a decade-plus in advertising, Hillary's expertise has expanded to meet each new technological innovation, bridging gaps between channels for the strongest possible returns. Previously, Hillary served as Director of Digital Strategy for top luxury brands, winning industry awards and speaking at conferences like IAB.

A performance-minded guide to planning and measuring streaming TV ads on a midsized budget Cross-channel measurement is possible and available to midsized brands with the right tools and the right analysts on your team. Table of Contents Intro CTV Budgeting for Growth-Stage Brands The Halo Effect: How CTV Drives Downstream Growth The FAST vs. Premium CTV Tradeoff Avoiding Fraud & Protecting Brand Safety CTV Reporting That Matters Try Shoppable CTV for Performance Key Takeaways Direct response is the wrong CTV objective. CTV's real value shows up downstream—in branded search lift, paid social conversion rates, and assisted conversions—not in clicks. Measure it with MMM and brand lift studies, or don't run it yet. CTV's budget floor is market-dependent, not absolute. Single-market testing can start at $10–15K/month on FAST channels; national campaigns need $75K+/month to register. Below your market's noise threshold, you're buying impressions that don't move the needle. FAST channels aren't a compromise. 69% of CTV viewers prefer free ad-supported streaming, and growth brands often win on unit economics there. The right FAST vs. premium split depends on your audience, your creative, and your CAC target—not assumptions about quality. Vanity metrics will get your CTV budget cut. Impressions, CPM, and completion rate don't tell finance anything useful. The metrics that keep CTV in the plan are branded search lift, site traffic lift, and cost per incremental action. Learn tested and proven methods of outsmarting the competition with agility, brand positioning, and creativity. Intro Connected TV (CTV) refers to internet-connected television sets and the digital content they stream. It's a powerful way to reach vast audiences with visually captivating advertisements. EMARKETER projects CTV ad spend will surpass traditional TV by 2028, reaching $46.89 billion! And it's easy to see why: Brands love the broad scale CTV offers for building brand awareness and the cultural importance of the shows and movies they can align with. However, streaming platforms are fragmented. This fragmentation makes targeting and measurement difficult. Attributing ad views to actual product sales can be a challenge. Add the generally higher cost of CTV inventory compared to social buys, and some growth-stage brands may wonder if the juice is really worth the squeeze. We've mastered the art of hands-on campaign management for midsized brands like Premier Protein, New Belgium Brewing, and TV's "The Chosen." You can too, with this guide. This quick yet comprehensive guide to programmatic advertising will help you make smarter investments in CTV, Display, Video, DOOH, and more. CTV budgeting for growth-stage brands Brand marketers often ask, "What's the minimum budget needed to run an effective CTV media campaign?" There's no one-size-fits-all answer. Your CTV budget floor depends on your geography and goals: For single-market dominance or performance testing, $10-15K/month in smaller markets or on free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels can work. Mid-market brands in major DMAs might need $40-50K/month for meaningful share. National brands need $75K+/month to register. Below your market's 'noise threshold,' you're buying impressions that don't register. The more important questions to ask yourself are: What specific objectives am I trying to accomplish? What would success actually look like? Where are your target consumers located? What channels or content do they enjoy watching? These two titan media channels are joining forces to close the loop for full-funnel advertisers. The Halo Effect: How CTV drives downstream growth Many growing brands chase direct response on CTV. They run a spot, watch for immediate conversions, see nothing, and cut the budget. That's actually backwards and wastes money. Per The Hollywood Reporter, TV's share of global ad revenue is declining from 15.8% in 2024 to a projected 13.9% in 2026. Advertiser budgets are moving toward more performance-driven digital channels. A lot of that budget migration comes down to measurement confidence. Performance channels give marketers a dashboard full of precise numbers. In contrast, TV gives them fragmented reach and visibility. The math seems easy: follow the metrics. But one channel's dashboard doesn't show the whole story. If you measure only CTV-direct conversions, you'll miss 60–70% of the incremental value. A campaign that looks "inefficient" on CTV alone often shows 3–5x return when you connect it to downstream channel lift and cross-device journeys. Planning media for the Super Bowl is very different from the World Cup. Learn how to plan one-night bursts and monthlong tournaments alike. How to set up a halo funnel: Use MMM to connect your TV investment to downstream outcomes. TV's cross-channel effects—lifted search volume and improved paid social conversion rates—don't show up in a standard dashboard. Marketing mix modeling is how you find them before someone cuts the budget. Run a brand lift study and tie it to mid-funnel signals. The more you invest in brand, the lower your customer acquisition cost should trend over time—but you need the data to prove it. Pairing a brand lift study with CAC tracking is how TV gets a seat at the performance table. Start testing shoppable CTV formats. Upper-funnel doesn't have to mean unmeasurable. Shoppable CTV ads incorporate interactive or transactional features directly into television platforms. This gives you conversion data alongside reach. Brands testing it today will have a meaningful head start as the format matures. If you're running CTV without MMM, brand lift studies, or multi-touch attribution, you're flying blind. Better to wait until you have the measurement budget than to run a campaign you can't defend. Predictive analytics and big-picture insights make marketing mix modeling tools invaluable to brand marketers of all industries. The FAST vs. Premium CTV tradeoff for brands Many assume that premium CTV networks like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ are automatically superior to FAST channels like Tubi or Pluto. But that's not necessarily true. In reality, 69% of CTV viewers prefer FAST channels. Challenger brands can take advantage of their lower barrier to entry. (The Trade Desk provides unified buying and targeting across both!) Let's compare the pros and cons: Where FAST wins the race How Premium takes the cake Lower CPMs ($15-30 vs. $25-60) Targeting affluent, younger audiences Less programmatic competition New product launches (premium context = high brand perception, safety) More frequency for same budget = better brand lift May convert more often than FAST = lower CAC Shorter, punchier creative (15-30sec) & lower frequency Longer ad formats, higher completion rates Avoiding fraud & protecting brand safety Some brand marketers worry about fraud in the programmatic advertising supply chain or their ads showing up next to harmful content. That's understandable! But our expert traders have mastered brand safety, data privacy, and waste prevention. Here's how: Platform defenses Tier 1 (Hulu, Disney+, Netflix, Roku, etc.) have strong safeguards (first-party content, curated supply). Tier 2 (Pluto TV, Tubi, Samsung TV+, etc.) have moderate safeguards (some UGC content, but editorial review). Tier 3 Open marketplace (via SSPs like PubMatic) has lower safeguards (all publishers welcome). For growth-stage brands, we recommend sticking to tier-1 and tier-2 platforms unless the budget is very small. Also, The Trade Desk integrates pre-bid fraud detection (ads.txt enforcement, Supply Path Optimization) and partners with third-party verification vendors IAS and DoubleVerify. This gives human traders full placement transparency, not a black-box algorithm. Agency defenses We don't leave programmatic trading up to managed services. Our in-house trading experts personally oversee every transaction and negotiate the best rates for our clients. To that end, we create publisher inclusion and exclusion lists in DoubleVerify that supersede any automated content partners. We continuously monitor ad placements for factors like viewability, fraud, contextual relevance, and quality of environment. "Brand safety isn't a filter you bolt onto programmatic after the fact — it's a function of how precisely you understand the inventory you're buying. The more contextual signal and show-level data a brand can get before the impression hits the bid stream, the more confidently they can show up next to content that actually reflects who they are — and stay out of content that doesn't." SEAN EDWARDS, Director of Programmatic & E-Commerce Media CTV Reporting That Matters Don't get caught up in vanity metrics like impressions and CPMs—they mean nothing if those views don't translate to actual sales or brand growth down the road! Growth-stage brands don't have the budget to waste optimizing toward the wrong KPIs. Vanity Metrics Meaningful Metrics Impressions (not predictive) Branded search lift (2-4 weeks after exposure) CPM (doesn't mean better CAC) Site traffic lift (from GA4, attributed to CTV exposure cross-device) Reach (raw number is meaningless without frequency & attribution) Completion rate (global benchmark 95% or higher) Shopping cart additions Cost per incremental action (from incrementality test) A scientific approach to measuring upper-funnel media's impact on actual sales growth And the scheduling or cadence of your reporting matters too. Since CTV is largely a top-of-funnel brand-building tactic, you might see very real effects later down the road. If you're too quick to evaluate and change your strategies after just a week or a month, you may be cutting the very things keeping your brand moving up and to the right over time. Here's a better timeline for reporting, which you can modify to your specific campaign objectives and parameters: Try Shoppable CTV for Performance Shoppable CTV, or T-commerce, is a hugely popular ad format for its ability to collapse the path between entertainment and purchase into a single tap. It incorporates interactive elements into TV ads like QR codes, "Add to Cart" buttons, or "Email me this" links that viewers can use with their remote control or smartphone. These campaigns can be very effective—but not always for the reason you think. Exverus' Media Supervisor Melanie Mogey ran a shoppable CTV test for TV's "The Chosen" and explained to Digiday that direct sales were not the primary KPI—video completion rate (VCR) was. In other words, Mogey and other media buyers have found that this kind of play isn't always a converter, but rather a strong awareness-builder. That's an outcome well worth striving for, but it does require different planning and measurement. CTV works for growth-stage brands when it's planned honestly: right budget for your market, right measurement infrastructure, right mix of FAST and premium inventory. The brands that win aren't the ones with the biggest budgets—they're the ones who know exactly what they're measuring and why. If you're ready to build a CTV strategy that connects to real business outcomes, let's talk. For more media buying tips, campaigns, and agency news; subscribe to our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter here.

GEO doesn't replace SEM -- here's how they work together in a media plan Photo Credit: Vitaly Gariev Key Takeaways: GEO evolves paid search — it doesn't replace it. AI search is changing how people find information, but SEM remains essential. The two disciplines need to be briefed together, not managed in silos. "Search" is bigger than Google. Social platforms, retail media networks, and AI chat surfaces are all search environments now — and each one requires a channel-specific strategy within a full-funnel media plan. Your metrics need to catch up. CTR and page rank alone no longer tell the full story. Search marketers should also be tracking AI Overview inclusion rate, LLM brand mentions, share of model (SOM), and overall brand lift. AI search advertising is here — but it rewards precision. ChatGPT is now selling ads, and Performance Max is the only Google campaign type currently eligible to appear in AI Overviews. As AI-generated ad copy levels the playing field, landing page experience becomes your real competitive advantage. Learn tested and proven methods of outsmarting the competition with agility, brand positioning, and creativity. GEO evolves, not replaces, paid search In 2026, brand marketers and advertisers are well-acquainted with the ways AI search tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are changing the way people find information and recommendations - fewer clicks, less web traffic, shorter paths to purchase. Ahrefs confirms: Google AI Overviews reduce clicks by 58%! The need for GEO (generative engine optimization) has transformed SEO (search engine optimization) tactics and made share of model (SOM) more important than rank. LLM crawlers largely ignore paid media content! Our parent agency, Brainlabs, is the domain expert on how to create content for AI search engine optimization: So, does this mean search engine marketing (SEM) for top-of-page listing goes away? No, but it does need to adapt. Read on to learn how! What even counts as "search" anymore? Search is so much more than Google (or ChatGPT); it must be considered in the context of a full-funnel media plan, understanding that consumers discover brands and seek information in many different places today. Social search We've been writing for years about how Social is the new Search, as 46% of Gen Zers and 35% of millennials prefer to use social media platforms for product and trend discovery over traditional search engines. Learn how to build media campaigns that harness the power of social media platforms as search engines and discovery hubs. Many people, especially younger adult consumers, trust creators and influencers they relate to more deeply than brand advertising. That's why creator partnerships, affiliate marketing, and user-generated content (UGC) campaigns are booming right now. It also means that marketers should apply SEO principles to social ads, for example: On Instagram, keywords in captions now perform better than hashtags for meeting searchers in discovery mode TikTok's algorithm is powerful for expanding reach and influencing viewers, particularly on its For You page and in search results Pinterest's search engine is designed for people seeking inspiration, how-tos, and product recommendations “Find the long-tail search terms that resonate with your consumers best, and aim to own those key terms. Be specific; don’t take your hands off the wheel, going broad-match or letting the ‘algorithm’ do the work.” -- Michael Robbins, associate director of paid search & social, Exverus Retail search Retail media networks (RMNs) are also ripe environments for applying search marketing strategies that get your product in front of searchers already in purchasing mode. EMARKETER reported in 2024 that 56% of American consumers start their product search on Amazon when shopping! To make your product or brand appear prominently on the search results page of a retailer's e-com site or mobile app: Prioritize home page placements Segment your audiences precisely Dominate your niche Consider many paths to purchase, including in-store Optimize for the right metrics For detailed info on how to do all that: Now, to Google: SEM vs. PPC vs. Paid Search Is there a difference between these terms we often use interchangeably? Yes. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is the discipline of marketing within search engines, including organic SEO (search engine optimization) and paid search. Paid search is the practice of buying ad space on search engines. PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is the billing model; you pay each time someone clicks your ad. It applies across channels including search, social, and display. All the levers of Paid Search have to work in harmony for effective digital marketing campaigns. Search Engine Journal recommends putting together an Integrated Search Brief at the beginning of each project so every team is working toward the same business objectives. Here's an example: Integrated Search Brief Primary Audience: Brand marketers Buyer Segment: CMOs, VPs, or Directors, companies $100MM+ annual revenue Buyer Role: Find 5 best media agencies on West Coast & request consultations Stage of Funnel or Customer Journey: Mid-funnel, consideration stage Intent Type Example Query Likely searcher need Channel Role Problem-aware "how to buy media cheaply" Understand options SEO, Content Solution-aware "best media agencies" Evaluate category SEO, PPC Comparison "Exverus vs. Brainlabs" Make shortlist SEO, PPC, Landing page Transactional "request agency consult" Take action PPC, Content, landing page “Set up proper goals (by managing your tags) and attribution (how you’ll report and measure ad success in relation to your business goals). Set up enhanced conversions and value-based conversion bidding based on your business goals (revenue, profit margins or lifetime value) well in advance to provide [Google and LLMs] with rich data points that guide automated bidding and machine learning.” -- Ryan Schuster, MBA, director of paid search & social at Exverus, in ADWEEK Google/AI Search metrics that matter If your CTRs are dropping, don't be alarmed. With search results pages receding in favor of AI Overviews, and Google sending less traffic to brand websites, page rank and click-through rate aren't the ultimate goals they used to be; they're just part of the picture. Now, search marketers should be holistically measuring: click-through rate (CTR) cost per click (CPC) AI Overview inclusion rate brand mentions in AI search tools share of model (SOM) overall brand lift multi-touch attribution Ditch the tired marketing acronyms, and measure what really drives business growth across the funnel. PMAX & Google Demand Gen: Google AI Tools Experiment with Google Performance Max (PMAX), which places high-impact formats across Google's entire ecosystem including search, YouTube, and Google Display. It works best with a variety of creative assets and rich data sets. PMAX and Google Shopping ads can all be placed in AI Overviews if they're aligned with the searcher's intent. Demand Gen can also be impactful for upper-funnel needs, as Exverus' Michael Robbins explained to Performance Marketing World, "Since the purpose of AI search is to be dynamic and curated to the searcher, this ad type is versatile, broad, and adaptable enough to feature." Once considered a "black box" with little transparency about where ads are placed and why, PMAX made a significant update in April 2025 that expanded channel-level reporting of where media dollars are going and which platforms are performing best. As of late 2025, Google AI Max Ads can be placed in AI Overviews, as well. Advertising in AI search tools Up until 2026, AI search has predominantly affected SEO, not so much SEM, because buying visibility in AI answers hasn't been an option yet. GEO, or building content to organically show up in AI answers, has been the main driver of AI visibility. Rather than building around keywords, content marketers are building around questions. Now, OpenAI has begun selling ads in ChatGPT, and our parent agency, Brainlabs, is already testing this new frontier. Learn what their testing revealed about targeting, pricing, measurement, and recommendations below: “[ChatGPT Ads] rewards precision. The more tightly your creative maps to the prompt, the better your cost efficiency. CPC is not worth it.” -- Ben Kahan, head of programmatic, Brainlabs North America The proliferation of AI-generated ads will mean that your ads will look very similar to your competitors using the same AI program. AI copy will level the playing field, only further increasing the importance of an optimized landing page experience to gain an advantage over the competition. Paid search ad copy will decrease in importance as landing page experience increases in importance. Meanwhile, Anthropic has scaled its Claude product to the top of the AI food chain by focusing on enterprise functions, subscriptions, and token sales, rather than ad sales. Brainlabs has been building custom Claude Cowork integrations with Notion and a library of over 400 skills authored by employees in just four weeks! We'll continue to be at the forefront of AI search advertising as it develops. The Role of paid search in a media mix Again, search marketing can’t succeed in a vacuum! It must be integrated into an omnichannel media strategy based on your audience’s needs and preferences. Here’s a helpful way to think about the functions of various media channels and how they synergize: What does your audience want? Exploration → Social Media Information → Paid Search Purchase → Retail Media At Exverus, we don’t keep these departments siloed. Our search marketers work closely alongside the paid social, programmatic advertising, and retail/e-commerce teams to share keyword strategies, devise ways to smoothly connect each touchpoint to a purchase, and keep creative brand assets and messaging consistent across all platforms. Provide your target audience with top-quality content in platform-specific formats, and you’ll become the brand they go to without even needing to search. For more media buying tips, campaigns, and agency news; subscribe to our weekly Paid Media Insights newsletter here.