The Compounding Power of Long-Term Advertising: A Review of the Evidence

A question came up on the Research Wonks list about the impact of advertising short-term vs. long-term. (If you don't know the Wonks, sign up at ResearchWonks.com: forum of ~1500 media researchers.)

I googled then AI-ed. Below are some influential works on the subject. ChatGPT summarizes the consensus thusly:

Long-term impact is typically 2–5× the short-term effect. This ratio appears consistently across academic (Hanssens, Mela), industry (Sequent Partners, Gain Theory), and practitioner (Binet & Field) research.

Short-term metrics underestimate ROI. Campaigns optimized for near-term sales often misallocate budgets away from high-ROI brand building.

Different mechanisms drive each timescale: short-term activation (rational persuasion, promotions) vs. long-term brand effects (emotional memory, reduced price sensitivity, loyalty).

Sustained investment compounds results. Continuing advertising reinforces brand memory and repeat purchasing; stopping spend causes rapid decay.

Media and creativity matter. Broad-reach, emotional campaigns (especially on TV and high-quality digital) generate stronger long-term multipliers.

Best practice: balance roughly 60% brand / 40% activation spending and evaluate outcomes over multi-year horizons to capture the full economic impact.

Evaluating Long-Term Effects of Advertising, Sequent Partners, 2014

Short- and Long-term Effects of Online Advertising: Differences between New and Existing Customers, Breuer et al., 2012

What Is Known About the Long-Term Impact of Advertising,  Hanssens, 2011

The Long-Term Impact of Promotion and Advertising on Consumer Brand Choice, Mela et al., 1997

The Long and the Short of It, Binet et al.,

Focusing on the Long-term: It’s Good for Users and Business, Hohnhold, 2015

Five key results from our long-term impact of media investment study, Chappell, Gain Theory

Giving Marketing the Credit it Deserves, Rubinson, TransUnion, MMA