Experts from Playbook, Rockerbox, and tvScientific discuss performance branding, CTV’s role in full-funnel strategies, and going beyond last-click attribution.
For years, performance marketing has been the driving force behind measurable growth. But as many brands are now realizing, it comes with limitations: scale eventually stalls, and efficiency declines. The once-reliable playbook isn’t working as well as it used to.
Enter performance branding: a strategic evolution that blends performance marketing with long-term brand building to drive sustainable, scalable growth. Forward-thinking marketers are already making the shift — but what does it really take to get it right?
Last week, our very own Matt Janusz (VP of Performance Ops & Yield, tvScientific) sat down with Bryan Karas (CEO, Playbook Media) and Ron Jacobson (CEO, Rockerbox) to unpack the shift toward performance branding. From breaking old measurement habits to making CTV a performance channel, they shared powerful insights that every marketer needs to hear.
Keep reading for key takeaways — or watch the full webinar on demand for the deep dive.
The Shift to Performance Branding
In your view, what fundamental misconceptions do brands still have about performance marketing, and how does performance branding correct those misunderstandings?
Bryan Karas (Playbook): Many brands are convinced that there’s more risk in investing in the upper funnel than in performance marketing because the latter is easier to measure. This often results in spending past the point of marginal return – in other words, many brands that are over-indexing in performance marketing are losing money on conversions.
We see over and over that reallocating that budget in performance branding brings more people into the purchase journey, at more efficient costs, and builds brand loyalty and customer affinity along the way. The overall effect of well-done performance branding is to raise ROAS and lower customer acquisitions costs – even if measuring that effect takes longer and requires nuance that performance marketing demands.
Ron Jacobson (Rockerbox): One of the biggest misconceptions in performance marketing is the belief that every marketing dollar should drive an immediate return. This has led to an over-reliance on bottom-funnel tactics and a short-term mindset. But in reality, marketing is a system, and performance branding acknowledges that long-term brand investment — through video, CTV, and other upper-funnel efforts — drives sustainable growth.
Performance branding integrates measurement methodologies like Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM), and incrementality testing to go beyond last-click attribution and understand how different channels contribute to conversions over time. It allows brands to confidently invest in awareness and brand-building without losing sight of performance.
Matt Janusz (tvScientific): A common misconception is that the final touchpoint in a customer journey is more valuable than earlier interactions someone has with a brand. This oftentimes leads to siloed marketing efforts and brands chasing lower CPAs in tighter attribution windows to drive outcomes. The result of this is a lack of visibility into a broader set of high quality customers with considerable lifetime value.
Performance branding provides a holistic view of a brand’s marketing efforts which leads to a far more balanced strategy for allocating dollars. The emergence of CTV, a full funnel medium, combined with cohesive measurement across channels is an unlock for brands to understand their customer base more broadly, and the different ways they’re driving value to their business over time.
Measurement & Attribution
Many brands still over-rely on last-click attribution. How should they shift toward more holistic measurement approaches like Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM), and incrementality testing to prove the value of upper-funnel investments?
Bryan Karas (Playbook): It has to start with the mentality: last-click might be measurable, but it’s faulty measurement that marketers have been harmfully addicted to for a long time. Last-click attribution is great for platforms like Google (and, to a point, Meta) that want to overclaim credit for your purchase activity.
We like to help brand marketers start on a better path to budget allocation by running holdout tests that show exactly where they can stop spending money and suffer very little revenue loss for it. That non-incremental spend is almost always at the bottom of the funnel, where last-click numbers look great.
Ron Jacobson (Rockerbox): Last-click attribution was never meant to be a complete measurement strategy — it’s just the easiest thing to measure. But ease doesn’t equal accuracy. A true measurement strategy needs to account for all the touchpoints that influence a customer’s decision.
A better approach is unified measurement, where MTA, MMM, and testing work together. MTA helps provide granular insights into digital touchpoints, MMM brings a broader view of how all marketing efforts — including offline and upper-funnel — drive sales, and incrementality testing validates what’s truly driving incremental growth. Brands that embrace this combined approach can confidently invest in upper-funnel channels without wondering if they’re wasting spend.
Matt Janusz (tvScientific): The first thing a brand should think about and understand is what the typical customer journey is across the different marketing touchpoints over time that their customers go through on their way to sign-up, purchase, etc. Along with that comes the importance of being able to track and measure those touchpoints in a unified manner, as with MTA and MMM methodologies.
A primary example with CTV is that a viewer sees an ad on their television and then pulls out their smartphone, Googles the brand, and clicks on a paid search ad. You now have two touchpoints to evaluate — and if you’re using a last touch methodology you’ve given all the credit to Google, whereas that search may have never happened without being primed by the CTV ad.
Once measured touchpoints are understood, it is paramount for brands to understand the incrementality of the different channels that are part of their marketing mix — namely, would the conversion have happened without a particular touchpoint in play? This unified view enables brands to more accurately assess the importance of different channels all along the customer journey and allocate budget accordingly.
CTV's Role in Performance Branding
With brands moving beyond bottom-funnel dependence, how do you see CTV and video advertising shaping performance branding strategies? What role do they play in driving measurable outcomes?
Bryan Karas (Playbook): Storytelling and TV (and smaller-screen video) go hand-in-hand. Given that CTV is still relatively under-adopted (with inherent cost advantages because of that), and it offers big-screen placement with digital targeting and data, it’s the channel we’re most bullish on for performance branding in 2025.
Great performance branding starts with great storytelling. CTV does more than provide an ideal placement for brands to build deep affinity with specific audience segments; the ecosystem of CTV partners like tvScientific can provide incredible data on CTV’s powerful lift on the performance of other marketing channels.
Ron Jacobson (Rockerbox): CTV and video have become essential for brands looking to scale beyond the limitations of search and social. These channels allow brands to reach new audiences, drive awareness, and create a halo effect that lifts performance across all marketing efforts.
The key is ensuring that measurement keeps pace. Brands need to move past outdated approaches like last-click and instead leverage a mix of MMM, MTA, and testing to quantify the impact of video. With the right measurement framework, brands can optimize their creative, spend, and targeting strategies to drive real performance from video investments.
Matt Janusz (tvScientific): In addition to its ability to provide incremental reach to paid search and social, CTV as a medium/format is unparalleled when it comes to its ability to span the needs of performance branding strategies, especially now that it’s measurable. Viewers are seeing a premium, large format, non-skippable ad in a laid-back environment. Brands can utilize a longer format 60s ad for brand building and storytelling, or shorter 15-30s ads with explicit calls to action that build recognition and drive potential customers down the funnel.
CTV is also unique in that it has tremendous standalone value (think of a viewer seeing an ad and navigating directly to the brand’s website). However, it’s even more powerful in its ability to drive a halo effect on other channels. Brands see significant performance improvements of other channels with the introduction of CTV. Due to the user experience with CTV, brands can more readily come up with strategies for how their channels work together, versus a race to the bottom chasing that last click.
The Future of Performance Branding
What trends do you see shaping performance branding in 2025 and beyond? What should ambitious brands be preparing for now?
Bryan Karas (Playbook): We’re seeing a lot more interest and subsequent adoption as brands come to understand more about incrementality and the restrictions of performance marketing without a brand component. This means that upper-funnel channel costs will eventually rise – and because of that, we’re encouraging brands to get serious about performance branding (and setting up their measurement and creative resources accordingly) ASAP.
Ron Jacobson (Rockerbox): Performance branding will continue to evolve as brands recognize the limits of over-optimizing for short-term metrics. The key trends shaping 2025 and beyond include:
- Greater emphasis on full-funnel measurement: Brands that fail to understand the impact of upper-funnel marketing will struggle to scale. The shift toward unified measurement — combining MTA, MMM, and testing — will become the standard.
- CTV and video becoming performance channels: As measurement improves, brands will stop treating video as just an awareness play and start optimizing it like a core part of their performance mix.
- First-party data taking center stage: With continued privacy changes, brands will need to build stronger direct customer relationships and ensure their measurement strategies don’t rely on cookie-based tracking.
- AI-driven insights accelerating optimization: More brands will use AI to synthesize data from different measurement models and make real-time adjustments to their media mix.
Ambitious brands should be investing in data centralization and measurement infrastructure now to ensure they have the visibility needed to scale efficiently in this evolving landscape.
Matt Janusz (tvScientific): Brands have a tremendous opportunity to be on the front end of the performance branding curve if they make the effort now to understand the value and how to utilize a newer format like CTV. The reality is that more and more dollars continue to move into CTV, which in turn is driving inventory partners to provide more and more signal on content and audiences to enrich media buys for brands and ultimately drive more value.
Ambitious brands who want to get out in front of their competition should invest in powerful formats like CTV, work with a measurement partner like Rockerbox who understands the best way to analyze your business, and engage experts like Playbook Media who know how to execute performance branding strategies that will ultimately drive the most value for the business.
