Advertiser Perceptions Survey Of Brands

Over the last six years, the Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group® has commissioned Advertiser Perceptions annually to survey brands and media agencies on the sales contribution of five advertising effectiveness factors: brand, creative, reach, recency, and targeting. The findings were compared to data released by NCSolutions, one of the largest and most prominent studies ever conducted on sales effect, to examine the differences in perception vs. reality. This week’s blog reveals the two sales drivers with the most dramatic disconnect between marketer perception and reality are creative and targeting.

• Creative: Marketers and media agencies massively understate the immense sales effect power of creative.
• System1 Chief Customer Officer Jon Evans says, “Creative is the number one factor in explaining the performance of your advertising and yet most marketers still don’t realize it. That means that those who focus on getting the creative right have a huge competitive advantage.”
• Andrew Tindall, System1’s SVP Global Creative & Media Partnerships, asserts, “We need to be bold, unapologetically say no to things to get time to make better ads, and partner with the right agencies that bring the talent, tools and knowledge to make work that works.”
• Targeting: Marketers and media agencies overestimate the impact of targeting by 2X.
• Les Binet and Sarah Carter caution, “Don’t target too narrowly. It may be efficient, but it’s rarely effective. Tight targeting means low sales and profits.”

Check out today’s blog post by Pierre Bouvard at: https://www.westwoodone.com/blog/2025/04/14/marketers-vastly-understate-the-sales-effect-of-creative-and-significantly-overestimate-the-impact-of-targeting-2/.

Take a look at an 11-minute video of the key findings at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-wZxQaROuI.