Creative
Branding
Long-term brand-equity-building ad spend, vs direct-response.
Branding (or 'brand marketing') is ad spend that builds long-term brand equity rather than producing measurable in-window conversions. Optimized to reach, frequency, brand-recall lift, and search-volume lift. Most affiliate marketers don't run branding; some performance marketers do upper-funnel YouTube and CTV with brand goals to drive halo effect on lower-funnel direct response. Measurement: brand-lift studies, geo-holdouts, post-impression search-volume analysis.
Example
DTC supplement brand allocates 15% of paid budget to YouTube branded-content sponsorships (no direct-response CTA) — measures brand-lift via Google's Brand Lift study and sees 14% increase in unaided brand recall.