Advertising.

We understand how it works better than ever. And it’s everywhere.

This should be advertising’s golden age.

Yet it’s never been harder for advertising to make an impact.

Thanks to advances in Behavioral Sciences, our understanding of what makes advertising effective has improved dramatically. Though there are different models, they generally agree on 3 elements: gaining attention, resonating emotionally, and connection to the brand. Methodologies are now available (and relatively affordable) that can pre-test ads and predict their effectiveness with remarkable accuracy. Our advertising should be getting better and better.

And advertising is everywhere. Media may have massively fragmented, making it far more difficult and costly to fulfill Byron Sharp’s edict to reach everyone in the category frequently. But nearly every new media is embracing advertising as a major source of revenue. Just look at Netflix, Roblox, and Amazon.

However, advertising effectiveness isn’t improving, it’s declining. While there used to be a strong relationship between reach and business results, this has largely eroded. In a world where everyone is overloaded with content, reach is no longer enough. Advertising needs to gain and hold attention.

Why is advertising effectiveness declining?

There are three usual suspects for this:

The growth in media and formats unsuitable for holding attention

Advertising needs to gain 2.5 seconds or more of active attention before it can start building brand memories (aka mental availability). The longer the attention, the greater the impact. But Karen Nelson-Field found that 85% of 130,000 digital ads tested fell short of this. It’s not a new problem. We now know there’s similar attention issues with magazine and newspaper advertising. It’s just that the traditional 30s TV ad format pretty much stands alone in its ability to hold attention, and yet it’s share of advertising spend continues to decline.

The allure of performance marketing

Many of the new formats allow marketers to measure precisely the short-term impact on sales, which has proven very attractive under ever increasing pressure to demonstrate business impact. Field and Binet have been warning for more than decade that long term brand building is needed as well as short term impact, in order to drive business results. Yet digital advertising will reach 70% of total global ad revenue in 2024, while traditional media continues to decline.

A decline in advertising creativity

Studies have shown that the quality of the creative is the single most important factor behind an effective ad. But creatives complain that the rise of data and short-termism is stifling creativity. And arguably, they’re still learning how to apply advertising creativity to these new formats (though creators seem to be thriving).

Of course, there’s some truth in all three of these. But it struck me there’s something deeper at play.

Recently, I was watching a late night talk show because I was interested in two of the guests being interviewed. I was engaged in the show, I didn’t have a second screen to distract me, and the advertising format was the gold standard for holding attention. Yet, when my wife asked me afterwards what ads I’d seen, I couldn’t recall a single one. Not even the name of a brand that had advertised. As I reflected on my behavior, I realized that I had unconsciously screened them out.

We all know that most people don’t want advertising. And we know that adblocking has become a conscious pursuit. In a recent Nielsen survey, more than 50% claimed to intentionally avoid ads most or all of the time.

But as people are confronted with more and more advertising in an already cluttered environment, it’s almost inevitable that ad avoidance becomes an automatic, intuitive behavior. People simply screen advertising out. In effect, the more we all advertise, the less it’s seen. As a man much wiser (and older) than me once said, “to be everywhere is to be nowhere”.

An alternative approach to brand-building

Rather than just relying on advertising to build mental availability, take a broader approach, guided by three principles.

Deliver an engaging customer experience, to enable positive memories to form

Consider this the primary means of building mental availability rather than advertising. The experience needs to be engaging enough to hold the customers attention so that positive memories develop over time. And to build the right associations, the brand needs to woven through every touch point.

Trader Joe’s is a good example. The playful packaging of the products, the store design, the hand-drawn signage, the cheerful employees in their Hawaiian shirts, the Fearless Flyer circular, the endless stream of new product introductions, and the quirky website. They together deliver an immersive journey of discovery and fun that can’t help but capture the customer’s attention and build a coherent network of positive brand memories.

Lean into your best customers, to do your advertising for you

This is your brand building campaign. If people hear about the brand from people they trust, they’re far likelier to embrace it than through any communication directly from you. So, find out what your best customers really love about the brand, and then amplify this through your marketing. Your customers will feel recognized and inspired to spread the word on your behalf.

For example, SHEIN picked up on the excitement its customers felt when unpacking and trying on their “haul” of fashionable clothing . It amplified this by using micro influencers and encouraging user-generated content across social media under the #sheinhaul hashtag, clocking up billions of views. McDonald’s, after years of trying to convince the doubters, finally focused on the things regular customers really loved about it. A series of marketing initiatives followed that tapped into these, most notably its Famous Orders campaign, inspiring its customers to advocate on its behalf.

Focus short-term marketing on retention as well as acquisition

Priority one for performance marketing is to get people to the brand for the first time. Once there, an engaging experience is key to holding their attention over time. However, encouraging first time customers to come back is also a must, as repetition can speed the process of engagement up.

Again, take SHEIN. It spends heavily on social media advertising (much to Google and Meta’s delight) that’s simply designed to drive people to its app. But, once there, it also does everything it can to get them coming back, with multiple opportunities to earn extra discounts and incentives.

The point underlying this approach is to see advertising for what it is today, in a fragmented and cluttered world. Once the primary mechanism for signaling the meaning of a brand, it’s now better suited to play a supporting role.

Put experience center stage, and advertising can help amplify the brand from there.