Business Insight for What’s Next

Most businesses treat marketing as a cost. The good ones treat it as an investment. The difference between those two mindsets is, very often, the difference between a business that grows and one that stalls. The old line still gets quoted in boardrooms: “Half my marketing works, I just don’t know which half.” It’s a nice quip — and a lazy excuse. In an age of tracking, attribution and AI, that mystery is largely solved. The businesses still hiding behind it are usually the ones who never committed to marketing properly in the first place. So let’s deal in facts, not faith. Marketing pays back — measurably. Nielsen’s analysis of thousands of campaigns puts the average return at roughly €1.09 for every €1 spent, and over €2 for the most effective quarter of advertisers. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a return most businesses would bite your hand off for on any other line of the P&L.