When Brand Meets Performance (And Why You Need Both)

Hey everyone,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on.

Let's get personal for a minute. If you've followed Obvi's journey, you know we built this brand on performance marketing. Meta ads, email flows, SMS campaigns - the whole direct response playbook. 

And honestly? It worked really well for a long time.

Even today, most of our marketing budget goes to performance channels. They're still the backbone of our growth.

But here's what keeps us up at night: Performance marketing costs are rising, ROAS is dropping, and every DTC brand is fighting harder for the same customers. 

And for Obvi specifically? We're expanding into mass retail, pushing into international markets, and trying to make sure our products sell on Amazon.

Suddenly, being "the collagen brand someone discovers on Facebook" might not be enough anymore.

On the Menu:

• First - The Performance Problem We're All Facing

• Second - How Brand Powers Performance

• Third - Making It Work for Your Brand (including what we're thinking about)

Before we get going, let's talk about what happens when your Facebook CACs hit a wall.

You know the story - you've maxed out your audiences, CPMs keep rising, and suddenly your winning channel isn't so winning anymore.

This happened to a brand in our network recently. Their solution? They tried TV advertising with Tatari.

Plot twist → They discovered TV was actually as measurable (and more affordable) than their social campaigns.

Here's what they told us:

• They could track ROAS and CAC just like digital

• Real-time performance data let them optimize on the fly

• Their ads reached both streaming AND traditional TV audiences (that's 2X the reach of streaming-only platforms)

• The whole thing was managed through one platform - no TV experience needed

Oh yeah, their CPA dropped 30% compared to social and they found entirely new customer segments they weren't reaching on Facebook.

So if you're tired of watching your digital CACs climb, it might be time to give TV a shot. 

Curious how TV can work for your brand? Tatari makes it simple to launch and measure TV campaigns with precision—starting at just $5k. 

Learn more and see what’s possible for your business.

The Performance Problem We're All Facing

Those early days of Facebook ads were something else - put a dollar in, get 3-4X back out. Run some quick tests, optimize your creative, and watch the ROAS climb. 

When you're growing fast and the numbers look good, it's easy to just keep doubling down on what's working. 

Why fix what isn't broken, right?

But here's what's happening now:

→ Customer acquisition always seems to go up

→ Margins are getting squeezed from every direction

→ Constant need to evolve to meet Meta’s changing algo

Obvi isn’t just DTC anymore either. As we expand into retail and international markets, we need people to recognize and trust our brand before they ever see an ad or walk past our products in Walmart.

The wildest part? This isn't just about more competition or iOS changes or AI-generated creative flooding the feeds. It’s that we’re going hard after that 5% of in-market customers with most of our marketing dollars. 

But think about your own supplement buying habits. 

When was the last time you switched your protein powder brand? Or tried a new vitamin? Most people aren't in "buying mode" for these products at any given moment. They only enter the market when they have a specific need or their current product runs out.

So when we pour all our money into performance marketing with a tight attribution window, we're paying premium prices to reach that 5% of in-market customers that every other brand is also trying to reach.

This is a simplification, of course. 

You SHOULD be developing ad creative that speaks to different layers of your funnel.

But pursuing TOFU audiences with conversion campaigns on Meta these days inevitably means climbing CPAs - especially at scale. 

How Brand Powers Performance

The challenge in the face of higher CACs, and more competition, is to fill the funnel profitably. 

So if someone in our target market sees an ad for Obvi on Instagram but has never heard of us before, they're more likely to keep scrolling. 

But if they've seen us on YouTube, heard about us from their friend, or watched one of our TikTok creators... suddenly that Meta ad hits different. 

We're learning this as we expand into retail. 

When someone sees Obvi on a Walmart shelf, we want them to already know who we are. Because let's be honest - few people are standing in the supplement aisle reading every label.

The numbers don't lie. Brands that invest in brand marketing see their performance marketing costs drop over time. 

Here's what we mean:

• Lower CPAs (because people already know and trust your brand)

• Higher conversion rates (you're not starting from zero trust)

• Better ROAS (your performance ads work harder)

We're seeing this play out in real time. DTC brands that combine smart brand building with performance marketing are seeing their cost per acquisition drop by as much as 70% compared to performance-only approaches.

The secret? They're not waiting until someone's ready to buy. 

They're building brand awareness and trust way before that moment. So when someone decides "I need to get serious about my health" or "I should try some supplements," guess which brand pops to mind first?

Measuring The "Unmeasurable"

Let's address the elephant in the room: Brand marketing has always been harder to measure than performance. 

That's why so many DTC brands (including us) default to performance marketing - you can see what you are getting for your money.

But that's changing fast.

New tools are making brand marketing as measurable as performance → 

• Media Mix Modeling shows us how different channels work together

• Multi-Touch Attribution tracks how brand touchpoints influence the whole customer journey

• Geo holdout and lift study tools that help nail down impact

• Platforms like Tatari bring performance-marketing precision to TV advertising—so you don’t have to choose between brand and performance.

MMMs and MTAs are mostly for the 8-and-9 figure brands, but even at smaller scale you can look into things like direct traffic and brand search as a percentage of your traffic and sales to see how your brand is hitting.

Questions to consider:

• How reliant are you on direct response “ad-to-sale” conversions to power your revenue? 

• What can you do to increase awareness and interest that isn’t a strict direct response ad? 

• Do your Meta CPAs drop when you institute brand marketing campaigns?

• Does your revenue completely dry up when you stop advertising on Meta?

Making It Work for Your Brand

"Okay, but what does this actually look like for a DTC brand like mine?"

Trust us, we get it. 

At Obvi, we're still spending most of our budget on performance marketing. We're not trying to compete with Nike's TV ad budget here. 

But these new measurement tools and approaches are giving us the confidence to evolve our approach. 

Here's what we've learned about making brand marketing work in the real world…

You don't need to go all-in on TV commercials tomorrow. For us, brand building starts with:

• Creating better YouTube content (that actually helps people)

• Getting serious about PR and partnerships

• Making our social feeds about more than just sales

• Testing smaller TV campaigns (yes, really - more on this below)

Think Longer Term → 

• The old way: Measure everything in 1 and 7-day windows

• The new way: Track brand lift over months, not days

Here's what we're testing at Obvi for 2025 → 

1. Flipping TikTok Shop On Its Head

Most brands chase pure sales on TikTok Shop. We're playing a different game. We're using it as a top-of-funnel machine that powers awareness and discovery:

• Working with creators to seed content

• Focusing on views over immediate sales

• Using Shop's algorithm boost to reach new audiences

• Breaking even on direct sales while building massive awareness

This year, we’ve seen this strategy improve our Meta performance, drive Amazon sales and lift retail as well. Which is why our goal is to break even on TikTok Shops from a direct sales perspective. 

For us, it is more of a brand marketing investment than a direct profit generator.

2. Exploring (Linear+ Streaming) TV

This is new territory for us, but here's what got us interested: DTC brands are getting CPMs up to 70% cheaper on linear TV compared to streaming. 

One thing we’re keen on trying is combining linear and streaming TV to see if we can reach audiences across both channels and amplify our impact. For brands like us as we expand into retail, we think this dual-channel approach will be crucial. 

Linear provides credibility and scale while streaming offers the precision and flexibility that we’re used to on digital channels. Using a platform that supports both linear and streaming simplifies campaign planning and provides holistic measurement.

3. Measuring What Matters

Some metrics we're tracking beyond just ROAS:

• Brand awareness over time

• Purchase consideration

• Organic social impressions

• Organic search growth

• Direct traffic grrowth

• Customer acquisition costs across all channels

• Retail sales lift (this is huge for us now)

Sum it up

• Performance-only marketing is getting more competitive and expensive (and we don't see that changing)

• Most of your future customers aren't ready to buy right now - you can’t only focus on the 5% of in-market customers all the time. 

• Brand building makes your performance marketing work better - every brand impression you create helps your Meta ads convert when someone's finally ready to buy

• You don't need massive budgets for brand marketing - channels like TikTok Shop can be brand plays if you think about them differently

• Focus on what you can measure, but think longer term - brand metrics take months to show up, not days

Performance marketing built Obvi, and it's still crucial to our business. But as we grow, expand into retail, and push internationally, we need both brand and performance working together. Maybe you're feeling the same way too. 

We're not throwing out the performance marketing playbook. 

We're just adding new chapters to it. 

Because in 2025, it's not about choosing between brand or performance - it will be about making them work together.

All the best,

Ron & Ash