WARC

Marketing's new bullseye 🎯 The rules of marketing have changed. Today's most effective campaigns don't just target demographics – they align with what people truly value. New research from WARC x Aletheia Marketing & Media, brought to you by LIONS Advisory, shows how Values-Driven Marketing helps brands hit the center of the bullseye with sharper targeting, stronger resonance and better performance. Read the carousel to discover the three major shifts shaping marketing and how Values-Driven thinking can help you stay ahead. Find the links to the report in the comments 👇

LinkedIn: where business meets… surprisingly effective advertising. Ad investment on the platform is forecast to hit $8.2bn in 2025, fuelled by GenAI brands, B2B creators and campaigns stretching into connected TV. It now outpaces Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit. Not bad for a network originally built for job hunting. Our latest Platform Insights: LinkedIn is part of a series of reports exclusive to WARC Media subscribers. Non-subscribers can read more on The Feed.

Making the leap from CMO to CEO is rare, but it gets easier if you're bilingual... You just need to get fluent in Boardroom. Former McDonald's UK CEO Alistair Macrow joined us on The WARC Podcast, filmed live at the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) Conference. He shared insights on his tenure and how he made the transition from CMO to the top job. Listen to the full conversation, as well as insights from Les Binet; Will Davis 📈 David Tiltman and Laurence Green, wherever you get your podcasts.

Marketers keep calling TV “traditional.” The data says otherwise. In our latest WARC Podcast, Angela Voss (Marketing Architects) joins Ann Marie Kerwin and Alex Brownsell to unpack how television drives both brand and performance (and why it deserves a bigger place in your 2025 plans.) 🎧 Listen now on your favourite podcast platform

Gaming is not a media channel. It’s a culture, a habit, a social space... And for 3.4 billion people, it’s how they spend their time. At the IAB UK’s Media Upfronts, PHD Media’s Jamie Lyons reminded marketers that treating gaming as one monolithic channel misses the point and the opportunity: “Trying to tackle gaming is like trying to tackle sport… you can’t do it as one.” With global games revenue set to hit $206.5bn by 2028, but just 5% of global ad spend going to gaming, the imbalance is striking. Especially when more Gen Zs play games than brush their teeth twice a day 🎮 As gaming becomes more social and cloud-based, it’s also becoming a major new stage for immersive, emotionally rich advertising – the kind that used to belong to cinema or TV. According to Lyons, the industry just needs a new language (and a better pricing model) to match its impact... Head to WARC.com/feed for more daily marketing news.

“Million is a rounding error.” Les Binet wasn't mincing words on the WARC podcast, live from the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) Conference – reminding marketers that real impact comes from billions of exposures, not a flurry of uploads. He’s joined by Will Davis 📈, sharing new research on efficiency vs reach. We also welcomed Alistair Macrow (former CEO, McDonald's UK), who tells us how he cracked the C-suite code, and the IPA's Laurence Green and WARC's David Tiltman with big picture effectiveness trends. Recorded with Anna Hamill. 🎧 Breaking the 'efficiency death spiral' and the CMO-CEO Transition – listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

What drives people to think, feel, and act the way they do? Behavioral Science and Values-Driven Marketing have the answer – it's their Values. Values are deep-rooted goals like achievement, tradition, and security that shape how we see the world. They also influence what we buy, who we trust, and how we respond to brands. New research from WARC x Aletheia Marketing & Media, brought to you by LIONS Advisory, shows that aligning with people’s Values boosts: 📈 Ad preference 💬 Relevance & likability 🎯 Media effectiveness And with AI making Values-based targeting scalable, the time to act is now. 👉 Read Unlocking the Value of Values-Driven Marketing via the links in the comments

Beats, bots and influence: new effectiveness research you need to know Recorded live at the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) Effectiveness Conference 2025, our latest episode brings together some of the sharpest minds in marketing science – from Wavemaker UK, MassiveMusic, BBH London, T&P, and Spikes – with WARC’s Anna Hamill. You'll hear: 👉 Groundbreaking new studies on influencer measurement 👉 Music’s surprising power to drive effectiveness 👉 And a few well-aimed provocations on AI Because bold minds know effectiveness isn’t static. It keeps evolving. 🎙️ Listen now on The WARC Podcast

So I'm a bit late to the party with my take on yesterday's excellent Effectiveness Conference from the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising). And the main 'influencer effectiveness' charts have already done the rounds. But here goes anyway... 1) The reminder from Les Binet and Will Davis 📈 that budgets really matter - in fact, what we spend accounts for most of what we get back. But it's not just absolute numbers; the psychology of budget setting matters too - the endless 'more with less' era is arguably leading to poor decision-making over budget allocation. 2) Fixed costs vs variable costs. If, as Les shared, only 30%-40% of budgets are going to media spend, then that spend has to work very hard to deliver overall returns on the marketing budget. How many ROI models account for fixed costs? And to what extent can we apply what we've learned about the power of consistency to pull back on asset creation and pump more money back into media? 3) Yes, there's the widely shared influencer charts from Jane Christian and Dominic Charles that show how effective 'creators' can be as brand builders. But there are two catches. First, the variance: creator marketing is, in the words of one speaker, "death or glory". That makes it difficult to plan - though this research is a great step in the right direction. Second, the lack of definition. The research was reliant on the contributing agencies' own definition of 'influencer' as a channel. That's not a criticism - it's a recognition that this area desperately needs a bit of codification so we can all understand what the hell we're talking about. 4) The tension between Les's 'go big or go home' message and Tom Roach and Dr Grace Kite's 'lots of littles'. To be clear - these are not necessarily contradictory (unless you miss out the 'lots of' part of 'lots of littles'); but this really is where marketing theory meets the messy reality of real-life marketing plans. As I said on a podcast we recorded from the conference, the next frontier is the 'how' of effectiveness, not just the 'why'. Congrats to Laurence Green and team on a cracking day. The WARC feed is filling up with the stories from the day - and watch out for two special podcasts with the speakers next week.

In The Future of Strategy 2025, agency strategists say they're busier than ever, but their influence isn't keeping pace. As well as exploring the issues raised in our survey of 1100+ strategists, we've explored the path forward with some of the boldest minds in our industry. Ideas include: 👉 Embrace systems thinking 👉 Foster imagination and disruptive thinking 👉 Rebrand #strategy from "back-office" function to growth partner Strategists aren't just thinkers. They're connectors, challengers and catalysts for change. Explore what's next (and how to future-proof your role) by reading the full report on the platform, now. Bold minds. Bold moves.