Brand (X) Performance, Not Brand 'or' Performance.

Published on July 9, 2026

Campaigns that pair brand building with performance returned between 25% and 100% more revenue than performance-dominated ones, with a median uplift of about 90%. The finding underneath the numbers is a reframe: marketers tend to budget as if brand and performance add together, but the data says they multiply.

For years, marketers have debated the value of brand versus performance. The brands that now combine both are the ones seeing growth. Cutting brand to fund performance does not just move money between line items, it lowers the return on the performance you kept. Brand and performance work as one system rather than competing for the same dollar, so the question is no longer which one to choose, but how to balance resources across the two so they multiply each other.

Source: WARC, June 2026

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