18 Sep New research links spending more on paid media and reduced sales
A recent study by Northwestern University has some stunning findings. Their research focused on how owned and paid media pertain to growing and declining brands. They segmented brands by their sales growth success across a 5 year period, which revealed remarkable (and consistent) differences in how brands approach media strategy.
Brands that had shown high positive sales growth for the 5 year period had grown their share of owned media digital traffic significantly more than their share of paid media ad spend. Which in itself isn’t so surprising, but…
Brands with no/negative growth had increased their share of ad spend more than their share of owned traffic.
This pattern was found to be consistent across all categories, whether a part of the ecommerce ecosystem or not.
To see the research and use an interactive chart that shows individual brands and categories, click here.
Of course, this might make you want to hit your head against a wall, but it shouldn’t, because this research is just highlighting what you’ve known for a long time. On its own, the traditional advertising model no longer delivers growth. Communicating from the inside-out is the only way to beat the system.