Every channel has a home corner; none lives on a pure one.
The channel debate is rarely about channels. It is a budget fight conducted in media language: the person defending TV is defending long-term spend, the person defending search is defending this quarter’s number, and the channel names are the uniforms. Put the channels on the triangle instead and much of the argument ends, because each channel has a corner where it does its best work.
The map
Broadcast reach builds the memory that makes people ask for you by name. Social and creators make you recognisable. Search and CRM convert the people already looking, and retail media and affiliates sit at the checkout end of that. None of them does only one job.
Broadcast reach builds Equity. TV, online video at real reach, audio, outdoor. These channels put the brand in front of the people who are not buying anything this quarter. Binet and Field spent years showing that this work pays out on a long curve and that it needs breadth more than precision. It is slow, and you cannot attribute it click by click. It is also the work in the plan that makes future demand cheaper.
Social and creators carry Identity. The distinctive assets, and the sense that the brand behaves like something in particular. What social does best is repeat the recognisable: the look and the sound and the running joke that makes the brand identifiable with the logo covered. Creators extend that with borrowed trust.
Search and CRM convert Activation. Search converts demand at the moment it surfaces, and email and CRM work on demand the business already owns. Both are precise and measurable. No criticism in that. The failure mode is running the harvester as the whole farm.
Retail media and affiliates sit at the checkout end of the same corner. Closest to the sale and the most attributable.
Mispricing
A channel is mispriced when it is judged with another corner’s instrument. Last-click makes TV look wasteful and flatters search, and budget then drifts toward whatever the dashboard can see. Decide the point on the triangle first; the channel plan expresses it.
Once the map is drawn, the most common planning error gets a name: judging one corner’s work with another corner’s instrument. TV assessed on last-click looks wasteful, because the click was never where its effect shows up. The same instrument flatters search: run a real incrementality test and the last-click number deflates, because a good share of what it claimed was coming anyway. A channel is mispriced whenever the metric belongs to a different corner, and clients reallocate on the back of that mispricing, always toward whatever the dashboard can see.
The most common planning error: judging one corner’s work with another corner’s instrument.
TV on last-click
- Looks wasteful.
- The click was never where its effect shows up.
Search on last-click
- Looks flattered.
- Incrementality tests deflate it: a good share was coming anyway.
Choose the point on the triangle first, the weighting the business needs; start from channels instead and you have let whoever owns the dashboard set the strategy. Then size the reach media to the Equity weighting, and hold activation at what live demand justifies.
Where this argument is weakest
Centres of gravity, not laws. Both kinds of work do both jobs in different proportions, and categories bend the map, so treat it as the default and let the plan overrule it when someone can say why out loud.
Binet and Field’s own evidence says both kinds of work do both jobs in different proportions: TV moves this quarter’s sales too. A search ad on your own brand name does a small amount of memory maintenance, at enormous scale. Categories bend the map, because a B2B buying committee and an impulse snack do not distribute the corners the same way. Treat the map as the default and let the plan overrule it, as long as someone can say why out loud.