bl.og / advertising
Why Advertising Matters: What Every Brand Should Know Before Spending on an Ad Film
Every founder we meet asks a version of the same question: is advertising actually worth the money?
It's a fair question. Advertising spend is one of the few line items in a business where the return isn't immediately visible on a dashboard. You pay for an ad film. You put it out. Then you wait.
So instead of telling you advertising works, this post shows you the numbers — and then explains the one thing most brands get wrong when they commission a video ad.
Advertising is a profit engine, not a marketing expense
The most rigorous study on this is Profit Ability 2, which analysed 141 brands across 14 sectors and £1.8 billion of media investment across ten channels.
The finding: advertising delivers an average short-term profit ROI of £1.87 for every pound invested, rising to £4.11 once sustained effects over 24 months are counted.
That's profit, not revenue. Not impressions. Not reach. Actual money left over.
Two details matter enormously for any brand planning an ad campaign:
- 58% of advertising's total profit arrives after the first 13 weeks. If you judge an ad film by its first month, you are measuring roughly the first two-fifths of its value and calling it a verdict.
- Online video — largely YouTube — returns £3.86 in profit per pound spent. Video ad production isn't the expensive option. It's among the highest-returning ones.
This is why advertising is important for business growth in a way that performance marketing alone can never replicate. Performance marketing harvests demand that already exists. Advertising creates the demand in the first place.
The creative is half the return — and most brands underinvest in it
Here's the part almost nobody budgets for correctly.
NCSolutions and Nielsen studied nearly 450 campaigns to identify what actually drives sales lift from advertising. The answer wasn't targeting. It wasn't the media plan.
Creative quality contributed 49% of incremental sales. Targeting contributed 11%. Reach and recency together came to about 19%.
Now the uncomfortable part. When Advertiser Perceptions surveyed brands and media agencies on the same question, they estimated creative was worth just 19% of total sales effect — roughly two and a half times less than reality.
That gap is where most advertising budgets go to die. Brands spend months optimising audience segments and media buys, then approve the film in a twenty-minute call.
Analytic Partners, whose ROI Genome database spans more than 750 brands across 45 countries, found the same pattern from a different angle: strong creative outperforms weak creative by 2.5x, and two-thirds of the quality of a video impression comes down to the creative itself rather than targeting, placement or timing.
The implication for anyone commissioning a brand video is direct. You are going to spend the media money regardless. That budget is committed. The only variable still in your control is whether the film inside it is good — and that variable is worth two and a half times.
Boring ads are expensive. Memorable ads compound.
Advertising effectiveness research from Les Binet and Peter Field, drawn from the IPA databank of nearly a thousand campaigns, found that emotional campaigns produce more brand effects and more business effects than rational ones, and are almost twice as likely to deliver top-box profit growth over the long term.
The gap widens with time. At three years and beyond, 43% of emotional campaigns reported very large profit growth, against 23% for rational ones.
Fame-driving campaigns — the ones people actually talk about — outperformed on every business metric measured, with 55% reporting very large sales effects compared to 29% for everything else.
Translated out of research language: an ad nobody remembers is not a cheap ad. It is a total loss with a smaller invoice.
India's ad market is growing — and moving to video
If you're a brand in Delhi NCR or anywhere in India weighing up whether now is the moment, the market data is clear.
India's advertising industry grew 8.3% in 2025 to ₹1,21,339 crore, and is projected to reach ₹1,30,416 crore by the end of 2026. Digital advertising grew 19% in 2025 to ₹71,621 crore — now 59% of all Indian ad spend.
Globally, online video is forecast to grow 11.5% in 2026 and social 11.4%, making them among the fastest-growing channels anywhere.
The money is moving toward exactly one thing: video content that holds attention. Which means the demand for high-quality ad film production in India isn't a trend. It's the direction of the entire market.
What this means when you commission an ad film
A few practical takeaways for brands planning a commercial ad shoot, TVC, or brand video:
Brief for the idea, not the deliverable. "We need a 30-second video" is a spec. "We need people who have never heard of us to remember us on Tuesday" is a brief. The second one gets you a better film.
Budget the creative separately in your head. If creative is half the return, treat it as half the decision. The cheapest production quote that delivers a forgettable film is the most expensive option on your list.
Give it time before you judge it. Most of the profit shows up after the first quarter. Kill an ad at week four and you've paid the full cost for a fraction of the benefit.
Go direct where you can. Every layer between your brand and the people actually making the film is margin that isn't reaching the screen. Working directly with an ad film production company means the budget goes into the craft — better cast, better locations, better post — instead of into markup.
Working with a production house in Delhi
Wingwangwoah is an ad film production company based in Delhi, making TVCs, brand films, digital ads, social reels and jingle ads for brands across India. We work directly with brands — no layers, no skim — which means more of your budget ends up on screen.
Our position is simple: we make ads that aren't boring. The research above is the reason that's a business argument rather than a matter of taste.
If you're planning a campaign, a launch film, or a content series, tell us what you're selling and who needs to remember it.
Sources
- Profit Ability 2: The New Business Case for Advertising — Thinkbox, with Ebiquity, EssenceMediacom, Gain Theory, Mindshare and Wavemaker UK (2024)
- Five Keys to Advertising Effectiveness — NCSolutions / Nielsen
- Advertiser Perceptions, marketer survey on sales-effect drivers (2024)
- ROI Genome — Analytic Partners
- The Long and the Short of It — Les Binet and Peter Field, IPA
- dentsu Digital Advertising Report 2026
- dentsu Global Ad Spend Forecasts (2026)
