To Win at Advertising in 2025, You Can’t Afford Guesswork

63% of businesses use paid channels to accelerate content distribution, Semrush reports.

However, while most businesses rely on paid advertising to increase brand awareness, reach their target audience, and drive sales, many fall into the trap of guesswork when crafting their campaigns.

This leads to wasted ad spend and underperforming ads.

According to Brill Media CEO Robert Brill, as we look ahead to 2025, the key to advertising success is moving beyond assumptions and focusing on validated data-driven strategies.

Who is Robert Brill?

Robert is a member of the Forbes Business Council and Fast Company Executive Board where he shares expert insights on data targeting, local advertising, media buying tactics, and business growth strategies. Under his leadership, Brill Media has been recognized 11 times by Inc 5000 and the Financial Times 500.

Robert and I kicked off our conversation by discussing the biggest mistakes brands make in their advertising campaigns.

He says that the major challenge is that they guess too much.

“For as much as our industry talks about data-driven marketing, it’s only data-driven after they launch a campaign. Prior to launching, they do remarkably little to validate their messages ahead of time. Fact is, that is the biggest opportunity for many brands,” he explains.

He advises businesses to do more with less by simply validating marketing messages before spending a ton of money on un-proven ads.

I agree that many brands miss the step of validating their messaging before launching campaigns which can lead to wasted ad spend.

It can’t be stressed enough that businesses should rely on data not only after the campaign post-launch but also upfront to ensure success from the start.

Watch our video if you want to learn what’s better — content marketing or advertising:

Smarter Targeting for Better ROI

Another huge challenge for brands is allocating and optimizing their advertising budgets effectively. Not to mention, the difficulty of maximizing ROI while navigating fluctuating costs and competitive bidding environments.

So, how can businesses mitigate these challenges?

According to Robert, competitive bidding environments have several characteristics:

• Opaque decision-making: It relies on the algorithm and creative elements like design and messaging define the targeting in a lot of those environments.

• Granular vs. broad targeting: While precise ad targeting can be useful, many brands narrow too much, limiting reach. Broader targeting can often drive better results.

Robert believes that understanding the nuance of each of a brand’s selected media platforms will open an unfair advantage.

“At the end of the day, I believe algorithms are smarter than humans, so rely on them. But people plus algorithms are the best at driving marketing success,” he adds.

Partnering with a reliable advertising agency can also help businesses deliver highly targeted ads to the right audience.

Strategic Steps for Smarter Advertising Decisions

You can’t be too tactical when it comes to your brand’s advertising placement. So, before making a purchase for one, consider the following:

• Budget allocation

• Audience targeting

• Platform selection based on business goals

• Evaluating campaign objectives

Robert advises against spending on advertising until messages are validated by customers because no matter how much data-driven optimization is applied later, a bad message cannot be saved.

“Once the message is validated, continue that validation process in smaller increments until the heat death of the universe. You never stop,” he adds.

He shares a case study of a client losing $85,000 per month on Google ads, highlighting that in just 3 months, Brill Media helped turn that around to a $36,000 monthly profit and increased client return on ad spend by 54%.

The agency achieved this by overhauling the client’s ad accounts, aggressively testing everything from ad setup to keywords, and scaling up across 286 accounts.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Brill Media (@brill_media)

But how can brands evaluate which platform will deliver the most effective results for specific goals and target audiences?

Robert shares three key factors:

• Experience and data: Choosing the right platform is based on experience and numbers. Brands should rely on data such as the fact that 46.9% of digital ad spending goes to Meta and Google in 2024, suggesting these platforms should often be part of the plan.

• Niche focus: Depending on the target audience, brands should use platforms like LinkedIn for businesses, Pinterest for women, and TikTok for younger audiences.

• Objectives: Different platforms cater to different goals. For reach and scale, use programmatic ads; for awareness, use CTV; for demand generation, use audio.

He says that businesses should put all of these elements together like they are putting together a team.

“Each player earns their way into the team, and you expect different outputs from each player. As the manager, your job is to combine these disparate parts, develop them into a winning level of togetherness, and bring the championship home,” he concludes.

Finding the Right Advertising Mix for Your Brand

In a recent study, GWI discovered that worldwide, social media users regularly use or visit an average of 6.7 different social platforms each month. This is yet to account for platforms outside of social media.

So, should businesses concentrate their advertising efforts on a single social platform, or should they diversify across multiple platforms?

Robert says that the approach depends on the size and stage of the business:

• Brands under $10 million need two to three platforms for scale. Those can be ad-based, referral-based, or non-paid media-based.

• At $10 million to $100 million, the intricacies of the business start to bring new challenges into the mix that media channels can solve for them. For example, a business that needs to retain customers may use aggressive retargeting tactics to keep revenue coming in.

• At $100 million to $1 billion, these companies need to scale from multiple channels.

• At over $1 billion, these companies need to keep messages in the market at scale across platforms.

Robert says that media channels will play a different role at every level.

“The commonality is this: understand the verbatim language that your customers use. Don’t guess that. Know it,” he adds.

Next, I asked Robert what are the signs that brands should add new paid media channel(s) to their marketing mix.

He provides two indicators:

• Winning message that scales: If a brand has a message that resonates well and performs effectively, it suggests the brand is ready to scale up by adding new channels to expand the reach of that message.

• Exhausted a channel: If a brand has maximized the potential of a current channel and sees diminishing returns, it’s a sign that it needs to explore new channels before its existing advertising strategy becomes ineffective or too costly.

By recognizing the time to expand or adapt, businesses can continue to engage their audiences and reach new heights in their marketing efforts.

In a previous podcast, we spoke to Pereira O’Dell Founder PJ Pereira who shared how AI is changing creative advertising. Watch the video to learn more:

How to Achieve Advertising Success in 2025

According to Robert, to strengthen online presence and boost profitability, brands must stop guessing about the messages that work.

“You know you’re guessing if you didn’t validate your messages with customers first. Focus groups, research, and modeling cannot replace understanding the verbatim language showing what customers actually want from your business. Guesswork is the death of a company, so we help clients steer away from it as quickly as possible,” he says.

In the end, understanding exactly what your customers want and not relying on assumptions is crucial for any brand that wants to build a strong connection and drive profit in today’s market.