3 Media Myths Hurting Challenger Brands (And What Actually Drives Results)
When budgets tighten or planning cycles speed up, it’s easy for myths to sneak into strategy conversations. Big brands might be able to brute-force their way through inefficient choices but challenger brands don’t have that luxury. They need smarter signals, tighter focus, and media that helps them feel familiar, not just visible.
Here are three of the most persistent myths we see this time of year, and what the data actually shows.
Myth #1: “More budget = more results.”
For decades, the industry has treated scale as the cure-all. If performance dips, increase frequency. If sales stall, broaden reach. But here’s the truth: performance isn’t a volume problem, it’s a relevance problem.
A challenger brand wins when audiences instinctively know who you are, what you stand for, and why you matter to them. Adding more budget to unclear messaging or scattered placements only accelerates waste.
Reality check:
Brands with strong familiarity outperform even when spending less. The difference is that their message is resonant, and their media choices reinforce it consistently across trusted environments.
What to do instead:
Prioritize clarity before scale.
Focus on high-impact environments where attention is real (publisher-direct, OOH, cinema).
Measure quality of exposure, not just quantity.
Myth #2: “All impressions are equal.”
On a spreadsheet, an impression is an impression. In the real world, they are not created equal. A display ad buried between low-quality UGC does not carry the same weight as a placement in a trusted news environment or a high-attention moment like cinema. Context shapes how people feel about what they see.
Reality check:
High-attention placements consistently deliver stronger brand lift, higher trust, and better ROAS — even when CPMs look higher on paper. And there’s growing evidence that lower-carbon media buys align closely with higher-quality environments, creating a dual benefit: better performance and fewer emissions.
What to do instead:
Know where your audience is most open to discovering something new.
Prioritize channels with genuine attention, not just cheap inventory.
Integrate carbon-efficiency as an evaluation metric, not as an afterthought.
Myth #3: “Last-click attribution tells the full story.”
It’s tempting to let analytics dashboards drive decision-making, but last-click has two core flaws:
It overvalues lower-funnel tactics that intercept existing demand.
It undervalues the channels that actually created that demand in the first place.
When brands rely too heavily on last-click performance, they end up starving the very channels that make them recognizable — and then wonder why growth slows.
Reality check:
Demand generation and conversion are two different jobs. Media that builds familiarity often won’t “win” the last click, but it’s the reason people convert later on whatever channel happens to be easiest.
What to do instead:
Use blended measurement: incrementality, lift studies, and quality-of-exposure metrics.
Pair mid- and upper-funnel storytelling with strong conversion paths.
Track how trusted environments correlate with long-term efficiency.
The takeaway for challenger brands:
You don’t win by outspending anyone. You win by removing friction making it easier for people to remember you, understand you, and choose you. Familiarity, clarity, and thoughtful media design are your advantage. And when every dollar needs to work harder, breaking free from these myths is the difference between campaigns that look good on paper and campaigns that create meaningful, measurable lift.
