Your Performance Is Deceiving You: The Case for Playing the Long Game

Every marketer knows the dopamine hit of watching CPA drop and ROAS climb. These performance metrics dominate dashboards, team calls, and boardroom decisions for good reason: they're measurable, immediate, and satisfying. But here's the problem: while these metrics are essential, they only tell part of the story, and it's a story that's making CFOs increasingly skeptical. In fact, 45% of CFOs now decline marketing proposals because the value isn't clear enough.

It might feel like you're winning when your cost-per-lead drops or your return on ad spend spikes. But if that success depends solely on catching people who were already ready to buy, are you really building anything lasting? Or are you just grabbing short-term wins that fade as quickly as they came?

The pandemic proved this painfully. While 20% of consumers switched brands during COVID-19, the companies that thrived weren't just the ones with the lowest CPAs. They were the ones people remembered, trusted, and sought out when everything changed.

Their success reveals a fundamental flaw in how most companies approach marketing, a flaw that's costing billions in wasted spend and lost opportunities.

In this article, we'll cover:

• Why your performance metrics are deceiving you and what they're really measuring
• The hidden math of diminishing returns that's killing your profitability
• How brand building delivers up to 30% efficiency gains and 10% revenue growth without increasing budgets
• The science of being remembered: why frequency matters and how to get it right
• A practical framework for balancing performance and brand to build sustainable growth

Let's start with the uncomfortable truth about what those impressive dashboards are really telling you.

The problem with metric obsession

Let's be clear: CPA, CPL, and ROAS matter. They're helpful indicators of campaign efficiency and immediate results. But they tend to focus on the lower funnel, targeting users who already have intent—those actively searching or considering a purchase. Research reveals a critical blind spot: these traditional metrics are so focused on late-funnel activities that they miss the broader brand impact entirely.

Picture the typical scenario: someone is browsing online, they already want a product like yours, and your ad shows up at the right time and place. They click, they convert, everyone celebrates. You got the sale. But did you win a customer or just fulfill a need that was already there?

Think about it this way: You're essentially operating a digital toll booth on the highway to purchase. You're charging admission to people who were already driving there. Yes, you captured the transaction, but you didn't influence the destination.

This type of performance marketing is less about persuasion and more about timing. It's transactional. You didn't create demand; you simply harvested it. The complexity deepens when you consider human psychology—that TV commercial they saw six months ago, the logo they passed on their commute, all influence that "performance-driven" conversion. But your attribution model can't see it. Your metrics are taking credit for a sale that the brand built.

The danger? Over-reliance on this approach creates fragile growth. Once the demand dries up or the cost of targeting intent-based users increases (and it will), your results start slipping. 

That's when marketers realize they've built acquisition engines without foundations—structures that collapse the moment the market shifts and competition intensifies.

Why brand = long-term growth

Your performance marketing is a ticking time bomb. It works beautifully until it doesn't, and when it stops working, you'll have nothing to fall back on. Smart marketers are already shifting their budgets toward brand building, not because it's trendy, but because the economics are undeniable. Let me show you why:

1. Diminishing returns are real

Every marketer eventually hits a wall where costs rise, returns flatten, and new users become harder (and more expensive) to reach.

The reality is brutal: you cannot double spend and expect sales to double. As Recast's research shows, advertising on auction-based platforms like Meta or Google exhibits inevitable diminishing returns. Why? Three key factors:

• The highest-intent audience (your low-hanging fruit) converts early
• Expansion requires reaching less relevant or more expensive audiences
• Ad fatigue sets in as audiences are repeatedly exposed to your ads

Let's make this concrete. Say your average CAC is $30 and your LTV is $50. On paper, you're profitable. But averages lie. The first batch of users might've cost you $10-15 to acquire. The most recent ones? They could be costing you $60 or more.

Recast's data reveals the shocking math: with a CPA coefficient of 1163, every additional $1,163 spent results in a $1 rise in cost per acquisition. Think about that: you're literally paying more to get less. While your average CAC looks healthy, your marginal CAC (the cost of acquiring each additional user) is already unprofitable. You're not just hitting diminishing returns; you're actively destroying value with every new dollar spent.

The curve tells the story: most marketing follows a concave pattern where initial spending drives strong results, but efficiency drops off steeply. Once you hit that saturation point around $5M in spend (as Recast's examples show), increased investment brings virtually no new customers. You're pouring water into a full glass.

2. Performance is a snack. Brand is the meal.

Think of performance like a protein bar. Quick energy, immediate satisfaction. But you'll be hungry again in an hour.

Brand? That's a full meal. It fuels you for longer, sustains momentum, and builds real strength. When you invest in brand-building, you're not just filling a gap. You're shaping perception, planting seeds of recognition, and earning permanent real estate in the user's mind.

The data backs this up dramatically. While performance marketing hits saturation quickly, brand building can deliver up to 30% efficiency gains and 10% incremental revenue growth without increasing budgets. It may not drive conversions today, but it pays off exponentially when a customer thinks, "I need X" and your brand surfaces first. That's a brand-driven purchase. That's compound interest on your marketing investment.

Here is a great representation of what I mean on the graph:

3. The benefit of being remembered

Great brands don't wait to be discovered. They make themselves unforgettable.

Consider the difference: If someone Googles your category, you're already competing on price, features, and whoever has the deepest performance marketing pockets. If they Google your brand name directly? You've already won. The click costs less, the conversion rate is higher, and the lifetime value is stronger.

Brand marketing creates memory structures. It's how you buy mental availability, ensuring that when the moment of need arises, the user doesn't browse. They navigate directly to you. As mentioned, during COVID-19, this made the difference between survival and closure: while 20% of consumers switched brands, those with strong mental availability retained and even grew their customer base.

This isn't accidental. It's architected through consistent presence, memorable creative, and the kind of frequency that moves beyond awareness into automaticity. When your brand becomes the default choice, you've transcended the diminishing returns trap that pure performance marketers can never escape.

How to Be Top of Mind

Building mental availability isn't a nice-to-have; it's the difference between being chosen and being invisible. The science of memory and the economics of attention have clear implications for how brands need to show up. Here's what it takes to move from awareness to automaticity:

1. It takes time and A LOT of frequency

The numbers are staggering: people encounter approximately 350-500 ads per day. Of those hundreds, we only remember around 5-10. That's around 1%. You're not just competing for attention, you're fighting for one of 5 available memory slots in an ocean of hundreds (maybe even thousands) messages.

So let's be brutally honest: if your audience sees your ad once a week, you're invisible. Once a day? You're barely a whisper. The brands that achieve mental availability, the ones people think of first and feel best about, are showing up 2-3 times daily with consistent, recognizable messaging.

This isn't speculation. The research is clear: memory formation requires multiple exposures across time. The 'mere exposure effect' shows that people develop preferences simply through repeated contact. But here's the critical part: those exposures need to happen within a compressed timeframe. Space them too far apart, and you're starting from zero each time.

Frequency isn't annoying when done right. Without it, you're not building memory structures; you're just adding to the noise. If you're not showing up enough to be remembered, you might as well save your money.

2. Make it memorable (because frequency without impact is waste)

Memorable creative is the difference between frequency that builds brands and frequency that builds indifference.

The formula for breakthrough requires:

1. Distinctive creative assets: This isn't about being different for its own sake. It's about ownable elements—colors, sounds, characters, or visual devices that become mental shortcuts to your brand. Think of Geico's gecko or McDonald's golden arches. These are memory anchors.
2. Emotional resonance: Data from the IPA shows that emotionally-driven campaigns are twice as likely to generate large profit gains as rational ones. Whether it's humor, nostalgia, or inspiration, you need to make people feel something. Boring is the only unforgivable sin in advertising.
3. Premium placements that can't be ignored: Connected TV, in-stream video, and geo-fenced takeovers don't just deliver reach, they deliver attention. In an era of second screens and ad blockers, these formats command the focus that standard display can't achieve.
4. Optimized for cognitive processing: The 10-15 second sweet spot isn't arbitrary. It's long enough to deliver a complete message but short enough to maintain attention. Your brand should appear within the first 3 seconds, and your key message should be clear even with sound off.

Remember: repetition without distinctiveness is wallpaper. You want people to not only see your ad often but also instantly recognize it as yours and associate it with a specific feeling or need.

3. Track and optimize your frequency (yes, brand building can be measured)

Performance marketers often dismiss brand building as unmeasurable. They're wrong. The same precision you bring to conversion optimization can, and should, be applied to building mental availability.

Modern tools like Campaign Manager 360 enable cross-platform frequency tracking, giving you a unified view of how often individuals encounter your brand across channels. The target? 60-90 impressions per user monthly. That translates to 2-3 exposures daily—the sweet spot where familiarity builds without breeding contempt.

But smart frequency management goes beyond simple repetition:

• Sequence your story: Instead of hammering the same message, use frequency to build narrative. First exposure introduces the problem, second presents your solution, third reinforces the benefit. This approach leverages the 'serial position effect'—people remember narratives better than isolated messages.
• Vary your creative systematically: Research shows that wear-out happens faster with identical exposures. Develop 3-5 creative variations that share consistent brand elements but vary the hook, talent, or scenario. This maintains freshness while building consistent memory structures.
• Monitor attention metrics, not just reach: Viewability doesn't equal attention. Track completion rates, engagement depth, and brand lift studies to ensure your frequency is working, not just accumulating.
• Optimize by platform and placement: A TV impression isn't equal to a mobile banner. Weight your frequency targets based on attention quality: you might need 10 mobile impressions to equal one CTV view.

The goal isn't to be everywhere all the time. It's to be present often enough, with sufficient impact, that when purchase intent arises, your brand has already won. That's not spray and pray, that's strategic memory building backed by behavioral science.

Conclusion: The Choice That Defines Your Future

Performance marketing will always matter. But if it's the only thing you're optimizing, you're not playing the short game—you're playing a losing game. The math is unforgiving: diminishing returns are a certainty. Every performance marketer eventually hits the wall where $1,163 in spend buys just $1 in reduced CPA. That's not growth; that's a death spiral disguised as optimization.

The companies that dominate their categories understand a fundamental truth: performance marketing harvests demand, but brand building creates it. One keeps you alive today; the other ensures you'll thrive tomorrow. This isn't philosophy, it's economics. Brand building delivers up to 30% efficiency gains and 10% revenue growth without touching your budget. It's the difference between renting attention and owning mindshare.

Here's the test that separates sustainable businesses from growth hackers:

"If we stopped running ads today, would anyone still think of us next week?"

Better yet: "Would anyone miss us?"

If that question makes your stomach drop, you already know the answer. You've built a performance machine that runs on increasingly expensive fuel, not a brand that lives in hearts and minds.

The path forward isn't complicated, but it requires courage. Start shifting 20-30% of your performance budget to brand building. Commit to showing up 90-120 times per month in your customers' lives. Create something memorable enough to earn those precious 60 daily memory slots. Track mental availability with the same rigor you track conversion rates.

Most importantly, stop confusing efficient harvesting with effective marketing. Your CPA dashboard tells you how well you're collecting today's demand. But only brand equity tells you if you'll have any demand to collect tomorrow.

The choice is yours. The metrics that matter today won't save you tomorrow. But a brand that lives in memory? That's an asset that appreciates forever.

Time to decide: Are you building a business or just buying customers?

Let’s keep the conversation going, feel free to reach out:

📩 Sergey Shpak

📧 sergey.shpak@aidigital.com

🔗 LinkedIn

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