Redirecting £1M in media spend to drive real business growth

Pausing paid media to understand true channel effectiveness

In Q4 2024, we worked on the ultimate effectiveness test; analysing the impact of a paid media pause for a major telecom provider. The brand’s internal forecast predicted disaster - a projected loss of thousands of sales across all product lines. But we believed that value had been wrongly attributed using the historic model, and that there were key learnings to draw from this period of advertising black out.

What happened next challenged everything that was previously believed about digital marketing effectiveness in this organisation.

Our Insights

1. The "Essential" Wasn't Essential

A long-standing marketing mix had become the norm. But this consistency masked a crucial question: were we driving real business growth, or simply paying to maintain existing customer behaviour?

Predicted: Dramatic drop in sales across all channels

Reality: Sales remained stable with minimal impact

Key Finding: Millions in paid media spend was potentially masking, not driving, natural customer behaviour

3. The £120K Product Revelation

One product category alone revealed:

- £120,000 spent on PPC keywords in one month alone.

- Only £62,000 in revenue generated, an ROI of -52%.

- Strong organic rankings already existed for most high-value terms.

- We were essentially paying for traffic we already owned.

2. The Model Was Wrong - Very Wrong

In fact, the findings couldn’t have been further from what the traditional model predicted.

Affiliate performance exceeded predictions by an astounding 233%.

Marketing Mix Models (MMM) had fundamentally misunderstood channel relationships.

Previous attribution models were hiding rather than revealing true channel value.

And the organisation had been using this MMM model to allocate budgets, for years.

4. The 40% Wake-Up Call

Perhaps most startlingly:

- 40% of PPC-initiated sales came from repeat customers.

- The brand was paying premium rates to advertise to existing customers.

- Organic search was strong enough to maintain visibility without paid support.

The Effectiveness Truth, Proven

Our analysis demonstrated three fundamental truths about modern digital marketing:

 1. Channel Cannibalisation is Real

   - Paid search was competing with, not complementing, organic search

   - Multiple channels were targeting the same customers

   - Budget was being wasted on internal channel competition

2. Attribution Models Need Rethinking

   - Traditional models significantly undervalued organic channels

   - Channel interdependencies were misunderstood

   - ROI calculations were fundamentally flawed

3. True Incremental Growth Requires New Thinking

   - Focus needed to shift to genuine new customer acquisition

   - Upper-funnel activities were being neglected

   - Budget was being wasted on capturing existing demand

Sometimes the most powerful marketing insight comes not from what you do, but what you stop doing. This experiment demonstrates how questioning conventional models and testing fundamental assumptions can reveal millions in potential savings and drive true marketing effectiveness. We believe most brands require a similar audit of channel management.

This experiment gave us the environment to truly test the long held beliefs about the marketing mix. The reality is that marketing has changed exponentially in the last year alone, previously considered best practices are now outdated. This moment requires ambitious brands to face hard questions about whether their marketing is still effective.

This is the sort of challenge we love to solve.

Do you need our help?