When Media KPIs Win, Marketing Loses Its Humanity

Modern marketers often spend disproportionately on media while under-investing in creativity, chasing reach over resonance. This imbalance, coupled with the obsession for short-form formats, risks weakening brand connection and long-term business growth, because efficiency without emotion doesn’t build trust, loyalty, or memory.

Somewhere between dashboards and deadlines, marketing quietly changed.

We now celebrate impressions, but forget to ask if we actually truly created any. The language of success became CPMs and CTRs and somewhere along the line, we stopped measuring the feelings behind the clicks.

On a recent campaign, the creative and production budget was about $75,000, while the media budget soared past $1.5 million. The math looked efficient on paper. But the ratio told another story: we were investing heavily in distribution, not connection, not meaning.

This isn’t about blaming media teams. They’re achieving exactly what their KPIs ask them to do. The problem lies in how we define success, rewarding visibility more than real value. A high CTR might prove someone clicked, but it doesn’t prove they cared. We’ve mistaken quick reactions for genuine connection.

The illusion of efficiency

It’s no surprise this imbalance shows up in how we measure success. The Association of National Advertisers found that most-used KPIs still measure efficiency and exposure, while the most valuable ones, those tied to actual brand or business growth, measure outcome and quality.

McKinsey & Company reports that brands adopting unified, full-funnel KPIs, linking awareness directly to sales and loyalty, see up to 2–3× higher ROI. Because loyalty isn’t built in the click, it’s built in the feeling that follows. That’s what consistent creativity earns: not just attention, but attachment.

Efficiency metrics are comforting because they’re immediate and easy to prove. But they measure how far our message travels, not how deeply and truly it lands. Think of Ariel’s #ShareTheLoad or Dove’s Real Beauty, ideas that didn’t just reach people, they changed how they felt.

The six-second trap

This imbalance shows up again in our obsession with six-second ads. They fit neatly into every media plan, promise quick attention, and look great on dashboards.

But here’s the truth: people today don’t reject long ads — they reject boring ones.

If shortness guaranteed attention, no one would watch three- to five-minute music videos that rack up tens of millions of YouTube views. People binge dramas, follow vlogs, and stream 90-minute podcasts. Attention hasn’t vanished; it’s simply migrated to where stories feel worth the time. What holds attention isn’t length, it’s belief. When people see themselves in a story, they stay. Because attention doesn’t follow duration; it follows meaning.

A six-second ad can be powerful if it sparks emotion or intrigue, but if it’s creatively empty, even one second feels too long.

That’s why some of the most memorable brand stories in Thailand today are long-form.

When a long story wins

Look at Five Star Chicken’s 'The Movies That Made (From) Us' and 'Want Five Star' campaigns. Both ran several minutes long, yet consumers stayed, shared, and celebrated them.

They succeeded because they respected the audience’s intelligence. Each film tapped into Thai family life and generational emotion while naturally weaving the brand into the story. The results weren’t just views, they were affection, talkability, and brand lift.
These examples remind us: time isn’t the enemy of attention, irrelevance is.

When the idea comes from a real place, a truth people recognize, people give it their time.

Views ≠ value

We’ve also seen the opposite, campaigns boasting 100 million views yet no business movement. One global CPG brand discovered that 90 percent of its impressions came from silent autoplay placements. The numbers looked fantastic, the sales didn’t move.

As Les Binet and Peter Field’s research shows, creative quality drives nearly half of long-term campaign ROI. Media efficiency without creative effectiveness is like turning up the volume on a song no one wants to hear.

Why this keeps happening

So why do smart marketers keep repeating the same imbalance?

1. Ease of measurement. Media dashboards refresh in real time; business outcomes require patience and integration.

2. Budget bias. Distribution feels scalable and data-friendly, while creativity feels risky — so we spend where it feels safe.

3. Fragmented accountability. Brand teams chase awareness, performance teams chase clicks, yet few share a common business KPI.

A more human way forward

1. Start with the business goal.

Start with shared business outcomes. Even if CMOs set clear goals, teams often translate them into disconnected metrics. Reconnect creative, media, and business intent from the start.

2. Rebalance creative and media investment.

If your idea and production budget can’t create something memorable, no amount of media will make it better. Fund the message before the megaphone.

3. Connect KPIs across the funnel.

Every media metric deserves a business twin:

Reach → Brand Lift

CTR → Conversion

Engagement → Retention

4. Measure attention quality, not just quantity.

Look beyond impressions to viewability, completion, dwell time, and emotional response - indicators of whether people actually cared.

5. Re-humanise success.

Marketing has always been about influencing human decisions, not dashboards. The moment we replace empathy with efficiency, we lose both art and outcome.

The shift we need

Media efficiency isn’t the villain; disconnection is.

When creative, media, and business goals align, efficiency amplifies effectiveness.
So next time we celebrate a record-low CPM or cut a film down to six seconds, let’s pause and ask:

“Did we save money, or did we lose meaning?”

Marketing doesn’t move the world by being seen. It moves it by being felt.