“For a multitude of businesses, advertising is about creating the profit that helps them grow, which in turn helps the economy grow. If advertising doesn’t do that, it’s largely pointless… Thankfully, advertising does create profit. But convincing senior company management can be a challenging task, without supporting evidence.”

These were the words of Thinkbox in the UK when unveiling ‘Profit Ability 2: The new business case for advertising’, the landmark study which demonstrates how profitability varies by media channel (and sector) and how TV advertising is the greatest driver of overall profit volume and has the highest weekly ‘saturation point’.

Profit Ability 2 provides the supporting evidence for senior company management, and at this special breakfast briefing we welcome our keynote speaker, Anthony Jones, Head of Research at Thinkbox UK, who will reveal the findings of this huge research project.

The report, featuring data from 141 brands and over 1.8bn in UK adspend across ten media channels, was conducted by Ebiquity, EssenceMediacom, Gain Theory, Mindshare, and Wavemaker UK to provide the first post-Covid analysis of advertising’s financial impact. It is the biggest ever econometric meta-analysis of the drivers of advertising effectiveness, and shows how and why advertising is a profitable driver of business growth, and proves that all forms of advertising pay back, especially when their sustained effects are measured.

Richard Kirk, CSO at Essence MediaCom UK, has given his own headline conclusion from Profit Ability 2, declaring: “Paid social spend [for large brands] may be treble the optimal level for growth, while TV could be getting less credit — and cash — than it deserves.” He adds that, “Linear TV for big brands could be delivering much more with a boost in investment, with online video also offering headroom for growth .”

This is your chance to join a discussion about the drivers of advertising effectiveness and advertising-enabled profit, drawing on the findings in Profit Ability 2 but also grounded in our experiences here in the ANZ market. We will be asking whether media buyers in Australia and New Zealand are over-investing in paid social and under-investing in TV – and if so, why.

We consider the value of studies like Profit Ability 2, and what impact they have in the market. There is ample evidence that TV is a powerful driver of profit but does this change where marketers invest? Is the goal of long-term growth and profitability being undermined by short-term tactics, ‘bad’ incentives, poor metrics and globalisation – macro forces beyond the control of even the most television friendly CMO and media planner?