How do you optimise a marketing budget to improve ROI? Before you trim channels or haggle over CPMs, check whether money is going behind creative that does not fit the market it runs in. Moving spend from unadapted global work towards adapted or local work you have tested before buying media is often the quickest return available, and the cost of not doing it never appears on an invoice.
Fresh evidence landed in September. Campaign reported that global campaigns deliver fewer commercial outcomes, based on a study by Publicis London, System1 and Effie comparing the effectiveness of global and local-market campaigns. The full write-up sits behind Campaign's paywall, so treat the headline as a direction rather than a formula. It is still a direction most budget holders have not acted on.
What did the global versus local research find?
Here is what is public. The study was run by Publicis London, System1 and Effie. It compared the effectiveness of global campaigns with local-market campaigns. And, in Campaign's words, global campaigns "deliver fewer commercial outcomes".
That matters because centralised creative is usually sold on efficiency. One idea, one shoot, one set of assets, rolled out across markets with a translated end frame. The production saving is visible on day one. The effectiveness cost, if this research holds, is spread across every market and every month the campaign runs, and nobody books it.
Before you quote the study in a client deck, read the full version for its sample, categories and how "commercial outcomes" were defined. A headline is not a business case.
Why do teams keep funding campaigns that underperform?
Inaction can be the greatest loss of all. It is an uncomfortable line for budget holders, because inaction rarely feels like a decision.
Prospect theory, developed by the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, explains why. People judge options against a reference point, usually the current plan, and feel potential losses more sharply than equivalent gains. Changing the allocation creates a visible, attributable risk: if the local adaptation flops, someone signed it off. Keeping the global plan creates an invisible loss: money that quietly earns less than it could.
So the default wins. Global stays global, last year's split rolls forward, and the underperformance becomes the baseline everyone measures against. The fix is not braver people. It is making the cost of standing still as visible as the cost of change.
Where does marketing budget actually leak?
In most plans the leaks are not in the media rates, which procurement has usually squeezed already. They are in fit.
- Unadapted creative running in markets where the idea, references or humour do not land.
- Media weight behind weak assets, because the buy was booked before anyone knew how the creative would perform.
- Even spreading across markets and channels, so no market gets enough to matter.
- Assets produced and never run, because they were made to a global template nobody locally wanted.
The table below is a simple way to decide, market by market, where money should move.
| Signal in the market | What it suggests | Budget move |
|---|---|---|
| The global asset pre-scores well with local audiences | The idea travels | Keep it global and put the production saving into media weight |
| The global asset pre-scores poorly locally | The idea does not travel as made | Do not buy media against it until it is adapted |
| Local competitors already own the emotional territory your global idea uses | You may be paying to advertise their position | Adapt the message or brief a local idea |
| Local conversation centres on a tension the global idea ignores | A relevance gap | Fund a local adaptation built on that tension |
| The market is small or the category is new there | A local build may not pay back | Light localisation: language, product, price |
| The market drives a large share of growth | Under-investment is the bigger risk | Make the case for a local build, and test it before full spend |
How do I reallocate budget to improve ROI?
- Audit spend by market and asset. For each market, list which creative is running, whether it was adapted, and what it cost to place.
- Read each market's context. Look at what local competitors are running and how audiences talk about the category. This is where global plans are usually blind.
- Score creative before you buy media. Pre-test global and adapted versions with local audiences or predictive scoring, so weak assets are fixed before they absorb budget.
- Ring-fence a test budget. Take a fixed slice from your lowest-confidence spend and fund adapted or local work with it. Small enough to survive a failure, large enough to read.
- Agree the rules up front. Decide what result scales a test, what kills it and when you will look. Pre-agreed rules take the politics out of moving money.
- Put the cost of inaction in the report. Next to every "keep", state what you expect it to deliver against the best alternative. Make standing still a line item.
- Reallocate on a fixed rhythm. Monthly or quarterly, move money towards what is working. An annual plan that never moves is a bet placed once and never checked.
How do you sell reallocation to a global client or a CFO?
Frame it as risk reduction, not creative preference. You are not arguing that local is better in principle. You are arguing that buying media against creative nobody has checked in that market is the riskier choice, and that new evidence points the same way.
Lead with one market, one test and pre-agreed rules. Use the global versus local research as context, not proof. And bring local evidence: what competitors are saying in that market and how the audience talks about the category. Local teams often know this instinctively. Your job is to turn instinct into something a finance director will sign.
Imagine a brand running one global film across eight markets. Rather than argue for eight local campaigns, propose pre-scoring the film in its two largest growth markets, adapting it where it scores poorly, and comparing results after a quarter. That is a small, bounded change with a clear readout, which is much easier to approve than a new strategy.
This is the work the Defy platform supports. Defy Monitor scores creative concepts for predicted clickability before media spend, so you can know a creative will work before you pay for it, and it keeps live competitor and audience intelligence running on every market you plan for.
