Walk into most ecommerce businesses and you find the same argument. The performance side thinks brand spend is a vanity project. The brand side thinks performance trades the future for this month’s number.
Both are wrong, and the argument is what holds the business back.
What the evidence says
Les Binet and Peter Field analysed hundreds of campaigns in The Long and the Short of It (IPA, 2013). Their finding: the long-run effective split is roughly 60% brand and 40% activation.
Brand building is slow and it compounds. It makes every later pound of performance spend cheaper, because warm audiences convert better and cost less. Activation is fast and fades fast. It harvests demand and does not create it.
Say you run only activation, on Meta ads or Google Shopping. The numbers look fine for a while. Then your cost per acquisition starts to climb and keeps climbing. You are competing for a pool of in-market buyers, and nothing you do refills it.
Share of voice
Say you hold 10% of your market’s sales but 15% of its ad voice. Binet and Field’s data says you should grow. Hold 10% of sales and 5% of the voice, and it says you will shrink.
That gap is called Excess Share of Voice. It turns brand spend from a luxury into the reason next year is easier than this one.
Why the argument survives
If the evidence is this clear, why does the argument survive?
Because of how the work is bought. A performance agency is measured on ROAS, so it argues for activation. A brand agency is measured on awareness, so it argues for brand. Each is rewarded for winning the argument, not for settling it. Nobody in the room is paid to own the blend.
The fix is one growth partner who owns the full engine. We run Meta and Google ads as one system alongside brand, and we are measured on the business result, not on either side’s favourite metric.
Put one person in charge of the result and the question changes. It stops being “brand or performance” and becomes “what is the right blend, this quarter, for this business”.
Once one person owns the blend, the next question is how much each side needs to spend.
Quick answers
Should ecommerce brands choose brand or performance?
No. Brand creates future demand and performance converts current demand. The useful question is the blend for this quarter, not which side wins.
Why does performance get more expensive without brand?
Activation harvests existing demand. If the brand does nothing to refill that pool, acquisition costs tend to rise as paid channels compete for the same in-market buyers.
