A few years ago, if you’d told a marketing team that a £2,500 media budget could generate more than 8,600 subscribers, most would have immediately asked the same question:
“What was the targeting?”
It’s an understandable reaction because as marketers, we’re trained to look for the lever, tactic or hack like it’s a secret ingredient. The assumption is that somewhere inside the campaign sits a clever setting, a hidden audience segment or a platform trick that explains the outcome.
The reality is usually far less exciting BUT far more useful.
Earlier this year, we worked with Epilepsy Action on a campaign designed to support participation in fundraising challenges. Specifically, they wanted to increase engagement from runners and build momentum around future challenge events. The campaign ultimately generated more than 8,600 YouTube subscribers against an original forecast of 650. Our Senior Performance Marketing Manager at Black Lab, Ady Matheson-Bruce, breaks down the interesting parts in his latest article.
The numbers were exceptional, but they weren’t the lesson which I’d argue was something much bigger, because what happened during that campaign reflects a much wider shift taking place across paid media. A shift that many organisations are still failing to recognise.
Why Renting Attention Is Breaking Paid Media Strategy for UK Advertisers?
Digital advertising has become remarkably efficient at delivering reach, in fact, I’d go as far as to say that may be part of the problem. We can reach almost anyone, almost anywhere, at almost any time. Yet, despite having more targeting capabilities, more automation and more data than ever before, marketers continue to face increasing acquisition costs, growing competition and diminishing attention spans.
The advertising industry has never offered more ways to reach people. Yet as platforms become increasingly automated and attention becomes more fragmented, many organisations are discovering that reach alone isn’t enough. In a world where algorithms increasingly determine who sees what and when, building an audience you can return to is becoming one of the most valuable assets a brand can own.
Campaign after campaign is launched with the same objective:
- Generate clicks.
- Generate leads.
- Generate conversions.
Then, the campaign ends, the budget disappears and so with it goes the audience. Six months later the process starts again…from zero. The result is a cycle where businesses and charities are constantly renting attention rather than building assets.
The Paid Media Outcome Most UK Advertisers Are Missing
When we started working on the Epilepsy Action campaign, the brief wasn’t to build a YouTube audience, it was to help more people discover and engage with fundraising opportunities. From the beginning, we recognised that success couldn’t be measured solely by what happened during the campaign. We wanted to create something that would still have value long after the media spend stopped and that’s why the most important number in the entire campaign wasn’t the reach, the impressions or event the conversion rate, it’s the audience that remains afterwards. An audience of people who had actively chosen to engage.
Why First-Party Audience Building Is Now a Core Paid Media Priority?
Across the industry, we’re seeing the same trend emerge, first-party audiences are becoming increasingly valuable. Privacy changes, evolving regulations and shifts in platform behaviour have all pushed marketers towards strategies built on direct audience relationships rather than reliance on third-party signals. At the same time, marketers are demanding greater accountability from media spend which means the days of vanity metrics being enough are disappearing. Budgets are increasingly being scrutinised against measurable business outcomes, forcing marketers to think more carefully about what constitutes long-term value.
The organisations responding best to these changes aren’t necessarily the ones spending the most but the ones building audiences they can return to; audiences they can learn from, nurture and activate repeatedly.
Why Relevance Beats Reach in Paid Media Campaigns?
One of the most persistent myths in digital advertising is that growth comes from reaching more people, yet, in reality, growth often comes from reaching fewer people more effectively. The temptation in modern media buying is to expand by broadening targeting, increasing reach and maximising volume but campaigns that consistently outperform expectations tend to share a different characteristic…
Relevance.
The strongest audience strategy isn’t usually the largest but the most intentional.
It’s built around understanding who is most likely to care and creating an experience that feels genuinely relevant when they encounter it. Sure, technology helps, automation helps and so too does AI, but relevance is the winner.
The Future of Paid Media Belongs to Audience Owners
The irony is that many marketers are currently investing heavily in AI, automation and optimisation while overlooking one of the most valuable assets available to them: engaged audiences.
WARC’s research into the future of media points towards a world where audience ownership, first-party data and direct consumer relationships become increasingly important strategic assets. As platforms continue to automate more of the media buying process, the organisations that invest in building audiences they can engage directly will be best placed to create sustainable growth. It’s a trend I expect to accelerate over the coming years. [WARC Global Ad Trends reports]
The organisations that thrive over the next five years won’t simply be the ones that generate the most impressions but the ones that build communities, audiences and relationships that reduce how hard every future campaign has to work.
Once you’ve built an audience that genuinely wants to hear from you, everything else becomes easier including acquisition, fundraising, awareness and growth.
So What Does This Paid Media Campaign Actually Prove?
Well, we forecast 650 subscribers and got more than 13 x that.
The story is that a relatively small media budget helped create an audience that Epilepsy Action can continue to engage, inspire and activate for years to come and that paid media performed its traditional role of generating awareness while simultaneously creating a long-term asset.
Increasingly, that’s what I believe great paid media should do. Create momentum.
Want to see the numbers behind the campaign? Read the full case study on how Black Lab generated 8,630 subscribers from a £2,500 budget.
You can watch the full clip used for the campaign below:
