Season 7, Episode 6: Measuring the long-term effects of brand advertising (with Carl Mela and Ross Link)

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Feb 10, 2026

Ross Link, CEO of Marketing Attribution and marketing measurement veteran, and Carl Mela, Duke quantitative marketing professor, discuss measuring long-term brand advertising. They cover what firms get wrong about brand measurement. They debate short-term metrics versus brand strategy and internal politics around measurement. They explain Carl’s two brand-performance metrics and practical tools for nascent brands.

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INSIGHT

Platforms Killed Shared Person-Level Data

Platforms withheld personal-level impression data, which reduced feasible person-level attribution.
That shift accelerated the revival of aggregated marketing/mix modeling approaches.

INSIGHT

Brands Take Time To Change Preferences

Brands are built slowly because advertising must change consumer preferences, not just beliefs.
Short-term metrics push firms toward discounts and direct response, which can erode long-term brand value.

INSIGHT

Reach Matters As Much As Targeting

Narrow targeting underweights reach and misses 'one-day' buyers whose lifetime value is large.
Investing in broad reach can more than offset wasted impressions by catching high-LTV first-time purchasers.

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In this episode of the podcast, I discuss the long-term effects of brand advertising with Carl Mela and Ross Link.

Carl Mela is the T. Austin Finch Foundation Professor of Business Administration at Duke University and one of the leading academics in the field of quantitative marketing and consumer choice. Ross Link is the CEO of Marketing Attribution, having previously served as the President of Global Marketing ROI Solutions at Nielsen. Carl and Ross provide a balanced perspective on brand marketing and measurement from both academic and industry lenses.

Among other things, our discussion covers:

What firms get wrong about brand measurement, both from an analytical and a conceptual standpoint
The most common internal political issues that Ross sees arise around marketing measurement within organizations
The non-obvious stakeholders for marketing measurement within an organization
How marketing teams can implement the two brand-performance measures that Carl introduced in his seminal Harvard Business Review piece, If Brands Are Built Over Years, Why Are They Managed Over Quarters?
The differences in approaches to marketing measurement taken across verticals for successful companies
The benefits and drawbacks of the various established methods of measuring long-term marketing effects
The tools available to a CMO to make the case for the long-term effects of brand advertising for a nascent brand

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