The study looked at three years of Media Mix Modeling (MMM) across a range of consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands, analyzing the incremental effect Facebook ads had on total business revenue. Interestingly, the study found that 57% of media impact is driven by factors “outside a brand’s control.” But, the remaining 43% was largely driven by the four levers (creative, frequency, duration, and reach).

In marketing planning, we often talk about creative, frequency and reach (in that order) as being the most important drivers of incrementality. This study essentially corroborated what planners have known since the 50s: prospects have to see a compelling message multiple times (over a long period of time) in order to become customers. It makes perfect intuitive sense, but this kind of humanistic approach to marketing is often overlooked in today’s preferred method of deterministic attribution and “cast as wide of a net as possible to inform the algorithm.”

Many brands run campaigns in very short sprints (sometimes less than a week) with a huge variety of creatives in order to “test and quickly optimize.” This study proves otherwise by backing it up with the raw math: brands need quality creative (not quantity), and that repeat frequency over the course of nearly a year is crucial. Brand recognition, affinity and positive value association all take time to create a clear value for the end user. Even if in-platform data says that some fresh ad is “performing best,” don’t be led astray from the human-first approach of product > audience > message.