The budget allocation question every CMO gets wrong
Most brands are too top-of-funnel or too bottom. The fastest-growing have cracked a specific ratio, and your attribution is quietly choosing the wrong one for you.
The money has tilted. Gartner found awareness and conversion now soak up 62.6% of total media spend, up more than ten points since 2024, while loyalty and retention spend fell 29%. The funnel is being squeezed from both ends and the middle is starving. With budgets at roughly 7.8% of revenue, there is no slack to waste.
The reason it feels rational is your attribution model. At any moment, only about 5% of B2B buyers are in-market, the 95-5 rule. Performance media harvests that 5% beautifully and stays blind to the 95% who buy later. Attribution rewards what it can see, so it credits the harvest and quietly defunds the planting.
That is the wrong ratio choosing itself. The fastest-growing companies run a deliberate split instead, and they steer against the algorithm on purpose. The exact numbers, the ESOV maths, and how to prove it to your CFO before you scale are in the full framework.
The brand vs performance split that actually moves the number
The exact B2C and B2B ratios the best players run, the ESOV growth maths, why budget beats ROI by up to nine times, and how to model it with open-source MMM before you commit a dollar. Straight to your inbox.