As businesses across APAC gear up for 2027 and beyond, marketing teams are debating the best strategies to drive growth. While 55% of agencies prioritize short-term performance marketing over long-term brand-building, recent research suggests a balanced approach, termed brandformance, yields better results. Brandformance combines brand-building and performance marketing to create and capture demand simultaneously, delivering a 1.6X higher ROI for Indian advertisers compared to paid social media.
The concept of brandformance stems from the uneven distribution of consumer demand. Performance marketing targets the 5% to 20% of consumers ready to buy, while brand marketing nurtures future demand. AI-powered shopper behaviors further complicate this dynamic, as consumers can shift from 'out-of-market' to 'in-market' at any point. A balanced investment strategy is essential to avoid the 'Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Valley of Death,' where reliance solely on performance marketing becomes unsustainable.
Research by Les Binet and Peter Field underscores that brand-building enhances performance marketing outcomes, debunking the myth that branding only drives long-term impact. WARC’s Pace Principle reveals that APAC campaigns with an equal balance of branding and performance investment deliver the strongest effects on both short-term and long-term business metrics. The ideal split for maximizing ROI is roughly 50:50 between the two.
Success stories from brands like Lenovo India, Ajio, and Zepto highlight the effectiveness of AI-powered campaigns such as Performance Max and AI Max for Search. On YouTube, brands like Dutchie and Vaseline use Demand Gen campaigns to drive awareness, engagement, and conversions. Data from Analytic Edge’s Debiased Machine Learning studies shows that YouTube brand-building campaigns can significantly boost the ROI of Google performance campaigns, with uplifts as high as 157% in Japan. Combined YouTube and Google performance ads deliver a higher average ROI compared to paid social media across APAC markets.
Brands like GCash exemplify the power of brandformance. By running video view, video reach, and Performance Max campaigns, GCash improved user perception, increased search interest, and reduced CAC by 95%. The upcoming year-end and new year mega-sales present a prime opportunity to enhance brandformance ROI, with YouTube delivering up to 3.2X higher ROI during high sales periods in India.