Brand marketing shown to drive up to 6x greater long-term sales impact

TransUnion and MMA Global released a whitepaper on October 2, 2025, presenting findings that challenge long-held assumptions about brand marketing measurement. The research introduces the Brand as Performance framework, which demonstrates that traditional measurement tools may undervalue brand marketing's contribution to sales by as much as 83%.

The whitepaper, titled "Giving Marketing the Credit it Deserves," draws from case studies involving Ally Bank, Kroger, and Campbell's. These studies tracked consumer behavior over periods ranging from 9 to 10 months, using identity backbones spanning 400,000 to more than 1 million households. Each case incorporated over 10,000 consumer surveys to measure brand favorability and its connection to purchasing behavior.

Measurement gap reveals undervaluation

The research identifies a significant discrepancy between what traditional performance measurement tools capture and the actual impact of marketing on sales. For Ally Bank, conventional methods measured 56% of the full marketing impact on account openings. At Kroger, traditional tools captured just 17% of the complete effect on online sales. Campbell's saw 40% of sales attributed through standard measurement approaches.

"The full impact of marketing on sales reflects account holders who opened an account, online sales, and sales for Ally Bank, Kroger and Campbell's, respectively, resulting from a test campaign that featured brand and performance messaging; consumers were tracked over 9–10 months," the whitepaper states.

Matt Spiegel, EVP of TruAudience Growth Strategy at TransUnion, noted the framework provides CMOs with evidence to demonstrate brand's role in growth. Greg Stuart, CEO of MMA Global, emphasized that the research proves brand investment compounds over time in ways short-term tactics cannot replicate.

Favorability pathway connects brand to behavior

The Brand as Performance methodology centers on what researchers term the "favorability pathway." This framework posits that brand marketing increases consumer favorability, which in turn drives multiple business outcomes: customer acquisition rate, purchase rate, purchase volume, and retention rate.

The research measured favorability's baseline levels and the lift generated by marketing campaigns. At Ally Bank, favorability among non-customers stood at 11.8% before exposure to marketing. A 10-week test campaign running from April through June 2022 increased favorability by 7 percentage points among exposed consumers.

Kroger's study, conducted from November 2022 through January 2023, revealed a baseline favorability rate of 24.5% among non-customers. The three-month campaign featuring the brand's "Krojis" characters lifted favorability by 24 percentage points.

Campbell's, despite maintaining a 64.9% baseline favorability rate reflecting its established brand status, still achieved a 1 percentage point increase during its three-month campaign starting in January 2024.

Conversion rates show substantial differential

The research quantified how favorability translates into purchasing behavior. At Ally Bank, favorable consumers opened accounts at 4.1 times the rate of non-favorable consumers over a nine-month tracking period. Kroger's favorable customers made online purchases at 4.7 times the rate of those without favorable opinions, measured over 10 months. Campbell's favorable consumers purchased at 2.9 times the rate of non-favorables during a nine-month window.

These conversion rate differentials persisted even without direct exposure to the test campaigns, indicating that favorability's influence on purchasing behavior extends beyond immediate campaign effects.

Long-term impact exceeds short-term effects

The studies tracked conversion behavior well beyond campaign completion to measure compounding effects. At Ally Bank, the long-term conversion rate lift was 1.8 times greater than the short-term impact. Kroger demonstrated the most substantial differential, with long-term effects reaching 6.0 times the short-term conversion rate lift. Campbell's long-term impact measured 2.5 times greater than short-term effects.

For Kroger specifically, 70% of the long-term impact stemmed from favorable consumers, underscoring favorability's role in sustained sales growth.

The analysis incorporated multiple methodological approaches, including causality-based lift experiments, Shapley value-based multi-touch attribution, Markov matrices to simulate favorability effects beyond study periods, and marketing mix modeling to determine optimal budget allocation for different business objectives.

Strategic implications for budget allocation

Ally Bank's study directly addressed whether the company should shift resources from brand-building to short-term performance tactics. The research projected that maintaining a brand-focused strategy would generate 16% more new customers and 29% more account openings over two years compared to prioritizing short-term gains. This translated to 7,100 additional customers and 44,300 more accounts when extrapolating a 10-week test campaign nationally.

Andrea Brimmer, Chief Marketing & PR Officer at Ally, stated that the research validated the company's decade-long commitment to brand-first strategy by demonstrating measurable business outcomes.

Campbell's findings revealed that favorable consumers maintained a 21% higher retention rate than non-favorable customers. The research also identified distinct messaging strategies: brand messaging proved more effective for attracting non-customers, while performance messaging resonated with existing customers.

Why this matters for marketing teams

The Brand as Performance framework addresses persistent challenges that CMOs face when defending brand budgets in boardroom discussions. Traditional measurement approaches have typically emphasized short-term performance metrics, creating a structural bias against longer-term brand investments during planning cycles.

The research provides quantifiable evidence linking brand activities to concrete business outcomes: customer acquisition, purchase frequency, transaction volume, and customer retention. This addresses a fundamental issue in marketing accountability—the difficulty of proving brand's contribution to growth using the same metrics applied to performance marketing.

The methodology's reliance on household-level identity resolution enables tracking of individual consumer journeys from ad exposure through favorability shifts to purchasing behavior over extended periods. This granular approach differs from aggregate-level measurement techniques that may miss the causal connections between brand building and sales outcomes.

Marketing mix modeling limitations have long frustrated attempts to capture brand's full impact. The Brand as Performance framework incorporates multiple analytical methods—including controlled experiments, attribution analysis, and longitudinal tracking—to construct a more complete picture of marketing effectiveness.

The findings arrive as marketing effectiveness measurement continues evolving across digital advertising platforms. Brand investments have historically been vulnerable during economic uncertainty due to measurement gaps that made their contributions appear less tangible than direct-response tactics.

Technical implementation details

The Ally Bank study constructed an identity backbone of over 850,000 households using TransUnion's identity graph, designed to reflect the bank's total addressable market. The 10-week test campaign from April through June 2022 ran across connected TV, display, online video, and paid social, featuring both brand and performance creative. Dynata collected approximately 10,000 surveys from backbone consumers during the campaign period.

Kroger's study created a backbone of roughly 400,000 IDs common across Kroger CRM data, Circana frequent shopper information, and Dynata survey panels. The three-month campaign from November 2022 through January 2023 was followed by seven months of tracking, with about 5,000 surveys collected. The analysis employed Circana's Shapley value-based multi-touch attribution combined with the integrated dataset of ad serving, sales outcomes, and brand survey responses.

Campbell's utilized a backbone of approximately one million shopper IDs across Circana's frequent shopper and Dynata's survey panels. The three-month campaign starting January 2024 included six additional months of tracking, with nearly 10,000 surveys collected. Similar to Kroger, the methodology incorporated Circana's attribution approach integrated with comprehensive ad serving and outcome data.

All three studies employed causal lift experiments as a foundational element, supplemented by covariance analyses to account for non-test marketing activities and Markov matrices to project favorability's compounding effects beyond the tracking period.

Timeline

• 2022: MMA Global introduces Brand as Performance framework
• April-June 2022: Ally Bank runs 10-week test campaign across connected TV, display, online video, and paid social
• November 2022-January 2023: Kroger conducts three-month campaign testing brand messaging effectiveness
• January 2024: Campbell's launches three-month brand campaign with extended tracking period
• March 2025: Research shows marketing returns in months 5-24 match those of first four months
• October 2, 2025: TransUnion and MMA Global release whitepaper revealing brand marketing undervaluation findings

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Summary

Who: TransUnion partnered with MMA Global to conduct research on brand marketing effectiveness, with case studies from Ally Bank, Kroger, and Campbell's.

What: The Brand as Performance framework demonstrates that traditional measurement methods undervalue brand marketing's impact on sales by up to 83%, showing that brand campaigns lift consumer favorability by up to 24% and that favorable consumers convert at 2.9-4.7 times the rate of non-favorable consumers, with long-term effects measuring 1.8-6.0 times greater than short-term impacts.

When: The research was released on October 2, 2025, drawing from studies conducted between 2022 and 2024 that tracked consumer behavior over 9-10 month periods following test campaigns.

Where: The studies focused on U.S. markets, examining Ally Bank's digital banking customers, Kroger's grocery shoppers across multiple retail brands, and Campbell's soup purchasers nationwide.

Why: The research addresses the persistent challenge CMOs face in demonstrating brand marketing's contribution to business growth, providing quantifiable evidence that connects brand investments to measurable outcomes like customer acquisition, purchase rates, and long-term revenue growth.