Sam Balsara warns marketers against over-reliance on performance media, calls for renewed focus on branding
At FICCI Frames 2025, Madison founder Sam Balsara said, “Digital is characterized by snacking, quick in-and-out habits. Advertisers schedule messages of only a few seconds. The unfortunate truth is longer emotional ads of 20–30 seconds with even a hint of a storyline work better for building an emotional connect."
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At FICCI Frames, Madison founder Sam Balsara raised concerns that Indian marketers are losing faith in branding, as shrinking urban demand and mounting business pressures drive advertising budgets disproportionately toward performance media.
“Urban demand has been falling for five quarters in a row. Green shoots are visible in the rural economy, but right now marketers have trouble on their hands,” Balsara said. “Under pressure from CEOs and investors, more and more budgets are being pushed into performance media—search, e-commerce, activation, promotion, sampling. While it has a larger role to play today, marketers are going overboard. As a result, long-term ROI on advertising investment is sharply coming down.”
Defining branding as the process of “shaping perceptions, building trust and creating an emotional connect with consumers,” Balsara reminded the audience that effective brand-building still rests on storytelling. “Over the last 50 years, we’ve learnt the hard way that stories build brands. Emotional appeal is twice as effective as rational appeal. TV ads, in particular, establish an emotional connect best and substantially help in creating a lasting bond between brand and consumer.”
While global ad spend is expected to hit $1 trillion this year, with 70% on digital, Balsara flagged a structural problem with digital consumption habits. “Digital is characterized by snacking, quick in-and-out habits. Advertisers schedule messages of only a few seconds. The unfortunate truth is longer emotional ads of 20–30 seconds with even a hint of a storyline work better for building an emotional connect,” he said.
Balsara pointed to connected TV (CTV) as a bright spot in India’s evolving media mix. With an estimated 60–65 million CTV homes, he argued that the medium replicates the “lean back, distraction-free” environment of television while capitalizing on digital habits. Citing a Comcast–MediaScience study, he said, “Recall was 3.4 times better for TV versus digital mobile for the first ad exposure, and purchase intent was about 30% higher. When a TV ad preceded a digital mobile ad, results were better than two digital exposures.”
On budget allocation, Balsara endorsed the 60:40 rule between branding and performance. “Sixty percent of spends should go into branding to recruit new users and grow the market, and 40% into performance to close the sale. Branding is essential to scale the business. It drives long-term success and sustainable profit.”
He concluded with a warning for digital publishers and marketers alike: “To improve the creative impact of ads on digital, we must replicate on digital some of the concepts that work on TV. Branding works best in a TV-like environment, and without it, performance media will begin to seriously under-deliver on ROI.”
