Performance Branding: The Key to Sustainable Growth in 2025 | tvScientific

For years, marketers have been caught between two seemingly opposing strategies: performance marketing and brand marketing. Performance marketing is all about driving immediate results — clicks, conversions, and revenue — while brand marketing focuses on building long-term brand equity and recognition. But marketers know that neither approach alone is enough. 

Enter: performance branding.

What is Performance Branding?

Performance branding is the strategic mix of direct-response marketing tactics with brand-building efforts. It goes beyond the short-term focus of traditional performance marketing and integrates full-funnel investment, ensuring that brands reach new audiences while also nurturing long-term customer relationships. 

The ultimate goal? Sustainable growth, lower customer acquisition costs (CAC), and increased customer lifetime value (LTV).

This approach is particularly relevant when considering the 95–5 rule in digital marketing. The rule states that at any given time, only 5% of potential customers are actively looking to make a purchase, while the remaining 95% are not yet in the buying phase. This insight underscores the importance of consistent brand-building efforts to create mental availability so that when the 95% do enter the market, your brand is top of mind. 

Performance branding ensures that businesses are investing in both immediate conversions and long-term growth, making it a more sustainable strategy compared to a purely performance-driven approach.

Why does Performance Branding Matter?

Historically, brands have leaned heavily on performance marketing, optimizing every campaign for immediate return on investment. But the truth is, performance marketing comes with limitations and overreliance on it can often lead to diminishing returns. Eventually, it becomes too expensive to acquire new customers without tapping into broader, upper-funnel strategies. 

Performance branding shifts the focus from purely transactional interactions to a more holistic, scalable approach. This leads to:

• Sustained growth: Instead of quick wins that fizzle out, performance branding builds long-term brand equity.
• Lower customer acquisition costs: By creating brand awareness, brands reduce reliance on expensive bottom-of-funnel tactics. 
• Stronger customer relationships: brand storytelling fosters trust and customer loyalty over time. 
• Diversification: Relying solely on performance-focused channels like search and display ads limit reach. Expanding into full-funnel channels like CTV can create more touchpoints. 

Why is CTV the Ideal Channel for Performance Branding?

65% of marketers say they use Connected TV (CTV) to achieve both their brand and performance goals. Why? CTV has the unique ability to capture the attention of a hyper-targeted audience, making it ideal for both brand storytelling and driving the right outcomes. 

Key advantages:

• Advanced audience targeting: CTV enables marketers to reach highly specific audience segments, ensuring that brand-driven messages resonate with the right people, while performance-oriented ads are delivered to those most likely to convert. 
• Interactive ad formats: Unlike traditional TV ads, CTV offers dynamic ad experiences, from long-form storytelling formats that build brand equity to interactive, shoppable ads that drive direct conversions.
• Premium viewing experience: Unlike mobile devices, CTV provides a laid-back, large-screen experience where viewers are more engaged. With non-skippable ad formats, high-quality visuals, and immersive sound, CTV ads capture attention better than smaller, distraction-heavy mobile environments.
• Cross-device integration: CTV seamlessly integrates with broader marketing campaigns, allowing brands to retarget viewers across multiple digital touchpoints. This means that audiences who see a CTV ad can later be engaged with complementary messaging on their mobile or desktop devices. 
• Incremental lift: 72% of marketers incorporate CTV in their campaigns because — when used alongside channels like social and display advertising — it can significantly drive incremental lift. This means your results will be amplified across the board. 

The Future of Growth is Performance Branding

The era of siloed marketing strategies is over. Brands that thrive in 2025 and beyond will be those that embrace performance branding — a data-driven, full-funnel approach that fuels both short-term wins and long-term success. The key to sustained growth is understanding that brand equity and performance marketing aren’t separate. They’re two sides of the same coin.

Ready to make the shift? Learn how in our upcoming webinar, Power Your Growth with Performance Branding, in partnership with Playbook Media and Rockerbox. RSVP now to save your seat.