The research highlights widening gaps between media allocation and actual sales contribution, pointing to the need for sufficiency-based media planning — investing at levels that allow channels to perform optimally.
The findings were presented during a closed-door industry discussion attended by senior marketers, agency leaders, and analysts, who examined how advertisers are recalibrating media investments amid tightening budgets, declining television viewership, and mounting pressure to demonstrate measurable returns.
Carrying the theme “Every Peso Counts: Media that Works for Consumer Brands in the Philippines,” the session organized by adobo Magazine featured insights from a study exploring how brands can ensure every media peso delivers measurable impact in an environment where accountability and performance are under increasing scrutiny.
Data-driven insights
The study, conducted by global analytics firm Analytic Edge, a C5i group company, was anchored on the concept of media sufficiency — defined as investing at the level required for a channel to perform optimally rather than spreading budgets thinly across multiple touchpoints.
As audience attention continues to fragment and traditional reach-based planning becomes less reliable, determining sufficiency has emerged as a critical discipline in media strategy.
Insights presented during the session were drawn from fresh Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) analyses across 11 FMCG brands in the Philippines. The study examined how various media channels contribute to actual sales performance.
Shifting media trends
The analysis found that television consumption in the Philippines continues to decline, even as TV still commands a dominant share of advertising budgets.
Meanwhile, short-form video platforms such as TikTok have experienced rapid growth, with media spend rising from 1 percent to 17 percent over the past five years.
This shift reflects changing consumer attention patterns toward mobile-first and short-form video environments.
Across the modeled brands, TikTok led ROI performance in about 70 percent of the models, delivering an average return of 2.2 times investment.
In the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) category, TikTok posted relative ROI levels of 2.42x and up to 4.7 times that of other media in certain comparisons. In food and beverage, TikTok’s ROI was about 1.7 times that of total media.
Despite these results, TikTok accounts for only 5 percent to 6 percent of total FMCG media spend, suggesting potential under-allocation relative to its modeled contribution.
Sufficiency gaps identified
The study indicated that many brands are operating below sufficiency levels, particularly in high-impact, full-funnel digital channels.
For TikTok, optimal performance was observed when investment reached between 86 percent and 160 percent of current spending levels, pointing to significant headroom before diminishing returns set in.
According to the study, underinvestment — rather than channel inefficiency — is increasingly a key driver of lost ROI.
The analysis also examined audience overlap between TikTok and linear television. Results showed an overlap of 48 percent to 49 percent, meaning more than half of TikTok’s audience is not fully duplicated by TV.
When both channels were used together, modeling demonstrated an incremental awareness lift of about 24.6 percent, indicating that the combination produces stronger overall impact than TV alone.
The findings reinforce the idea that diversified, sufficiency-led media investments can enhance effectiveness when integrated thoughtfully into the broader mix.
Smarter budget alignment
Padmanabhan Ramaswamy, managing director for Southeast Asia at Analytic Edge, emphasized that the challenge for brands is not merely identifying high-ROI platforms but aligning budgets with modeled marginal returns.
“What this study highlights is not simply which platform performs well, but whether budgets are aligned with modeled sales contributions. Media sufficiency is about investing at the right scale so that channels can deliver their full potential, rather than being underfunded and misunderstood,” he said.
The findings challenge conservative allocation habits and underscore the importance of data-led planning in a complex and rapidly evolving media environment.
Participants at the discussion noted a growing consensus within the industry: as scrutiny over marketing effectiveness intensifies, success will increasingly depend on sufficiency-based investment decisions grounded in robust analytics rather than broad experimentation.
Insights from the session are expected to inform ongoing conversations among advertisers and agencies as they refine media strategies in the year ahead. — Ed: Corrie S. Narisma
