Beyond Precision: Why Branding Requires More Than Just Performance Marketing

Sridevi Sarkar, a Media Account Specialist for YouTube Ads at Google, explores the shift in digital advertising and how to create meaningful brand impact 

By 2025, digital advertising will have hit a key turning point, Happydemics wrote in a recent article, “Latest Digital Marketing Trends: Driving Advertising Success in 2025.” With more than 5.5 billion internet users and 5.2 billion people active on social media, brands now have a lot of opportunities to connect with audiences. However, this huge opportunity has made precision an obsession: you need to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time to guarantee success.

Sridevi Sarkar, a Media Account Specialist for YouTube Ads at Google, believes this way of thinking overlooks bigger opportunities. Over 15 years, she has crafted ad strategies used by thousands of advertisers worldwide. She helped develop tools and frameworks such as the YouTube Ads Digital Maturity Framework, OptiScore for Brand Campaigns, and Full-Funnel Budget Mixes in Reach Planner. These innovations have had an influence on billions in ad spending and changed how businesses balance brand and performance marketing.

We talked with Sridevi about the need to move branding past narrow targeting, the new ideas she has helped create, and what lies ahead for advertising.

Sridevi, your area of work challenges the idea that precision targeting is what helps brands grow. Why do you think branding needs a different strategy? 

Precision is the foundation of performance marketing. If the goal is to make someone download an app or buy a product today, targeting them based on intent signals and focusing on quick conversions makes sense. But branding isn’t a transaction. It builds on trust, memory, and meaning. These are elements that develop over time, not in seconds.

When we look at branding based on performance metrics, we may end up focusing too much. We might connect with people who are ready to take action now but miss out on future customers, influencers, and other key audiences. Strong brands don’t thrive because they chase clicks. They last because they build emotional ties that people remember.

At Google, which has been described as “the most powerful company in the world” by the BBC, you helped create systems that combine strategy and scale. Can you give examples of times when this approach led to better results for advertisers? 

One example is the YouTube Ads Digital Maturity Framework, which we built using best practices from Google and BCG. It helped advertisers figure out if they were at the beginning stages, growing, connected, or advanced in their digital maturity. This system encouraged global clients to use data-driven planning, smarter targeting, and cross-funnel tracking. In the end, it led to noticeable improvements in ROI across the board.

Another example is OptiScore for Brand Campaigns. Before now, Optimization Score used to be known for performance-focused campaigns. So, I advocated for building one for Brand that can enable advertisers to connect and optimize campaign structure to brand health results. This potentially helped brand advertisers find a way to evaluate success of their brand advertising dollars.

There’s also Full-Funnel Budget Mixes in Reach Planner. This tool helps advertisers effectively divide their budgets across stages like awareness, consideration, and action. It became the first of its kind to bring multi-funnel planning to a self-serve format. This gave advertisers a way to defend spending on awareness while keeping it tied to end results.

Then, when you were at Google India, you designed and led the analytical framework that powered the research, “Consumer Querimetrix: A Machine-Learning Powered Framework to Nowcast Consumer Behavior from Google Search Data.” Consumer Querimetrix is the first of its kind in India because it uses machine learning to know what people are searching for online, and then uses the same data to know what they actually want in real life, something surveys and dealer reports had never achieved. So, can you tell us more about it? 

At that time, a lot of forecasting in India was based on surveys or dealer reports, which were often slow and inaccurate. However, Consumer Querimetrix changed all that. Consumer Querimetrix is a machine-learning model built to forecast consumer demand by looking at search behavior on a large scale. When enough people search for relevant terms, those searches can be grouped and compared against actual sales data, giving carmakers and advertisers the opportunity to predict likely outcomes.

A good number of research studies become irrelevant with time. However, Consumer Querimetrix is still very significant for the field of digital advertising today because it helps us change the way we view search data. Can you shed more light on that?    

Yes, Consumer Querimetrix is very significant for digital advertising as a whole because it helps us change the way we view search data, from being seen as a tactical tool to more of a strategic asset. It is not just a report, but it is a working model, which can be used by advertisers, automakers, and even investors to make real decisions. By demonstrating that search data could be used to predict demand, it gave digital intent a new role in corporate strategy. Now, search is no longer just about clicks. It can be used to make billion-dollar decisions regarding production, inventory, and marketing. That is good news for digital advertising as it moves beyond just implementation to strategy.

Thereafter, you created the Customer Objective-Driven YouTube Advertising Methodology for Brand Effectiveness, which is a unique framework because it provides a formal and structured system that starts with an advertiser’s business objectives and then overlays them neatly onto campaign design.  How does that work? 

Previously, most YouTube campaigns were built around such metrics like impressions or cost-per-view. So, there was no such framework to align corporate goals with YouTube Ads strategy and execution. Now, the Customer Objective-Driven YouTube Advertising Methodology for Brand Effectiveness reverses that. It is a step-by-step planning framework, which rather begins with the actual business objectives of the advertiser such as sales, market share,  or brand equity. Based on that, you align those objectives to the specific ad format, target audience, and a timeline view of how you will organize and run your ad campaigns and how you will measure success. So, it is a thorough consultative solution on the strategy you create based on what the business actually wants to accomplish.

Methodologies can only make a difference if they change practice. So your YouTube framework, the “Customer Objective-Driven YouTube Advertising Methodology for Brand Effectiveness,” is significant in the sense that it has transformed YouTube into a platform for building real brands. In what specific ways is it changing the way we advertise today?    

By integrating customer objectives into campaign design, it allows Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) to link ad spend directly to results they can discuss in the boardroom, such as brand value, loyalty, or long-term growth. That is very important because it puts brand ads on the same level with performance campaigns in terms of accountability. With time, agencies adopted it, and advertisers started using it to justify larger, more significant video budgets. Now, it has made YouTube a platform you can use to measure brand success instead of just being seen as a channel for impressions.

Now, many people often talk about your leadership role at Google when discussing your work. But outside of that, what sets your contributions apart in the advertising world, and what effects has it had on the industry? 

I believe originality comes from rethinking how we measure things. For years, digital advertising treated branding and performance as if they were two separate areas that did not align. I have worked to prove that the same careful methods we use in performance campaigns can also work for brand campaigns without losing creativity. For instance, I suggested using OptiScore, which was known as a performance measurement, for brand campaigns. It gave advertisers the first chance to link campaign quality with brand health. This shifted the focus from asking “can we measure branding?” to asking “are our campaigns built to create long-term trust?”

Today, millions of advertisers rely on my tools and frameworks because of their widespread use. Many businesses and organizations are able to get guidance on campaign planning. I have used my work to speak at small and medium industry events and lead workshops to share the knowledge and guidance. Many experts have now adopted similar methods in their work, showing how useful these approaches are.

Why has the industry acknowledged these innovations, in your view? 

I think it’s because these frameworks and tools didn’t only succeed at Google. They changed how advertisers in various fields approach growth. Being asked to judge the Global Recognition Awards in Technology and Software Engineering this year shows that. The industry seems to be shifting. It’s no longer just outcomes that matter but also fresh approaches that could shape where advertising heads next.

Your journey began far away from Silicon Valley. How do you think that shaped how you see things? 

I started out in India, working at the post office in a typical setup. Moving into tech felt like a leap, but it helped me build a passion to understand how consumers behave and how digital systems work. During my time at Google India, I worked on innovative projects like Consumer Querimetrix, which showed how search queries could forecast sales in a very significant way. This was the first such study. It was pioneering in its approach and was adopted by leading players in the auto industry. I also led consumer research studies to gather insights on how Car Buyers Search for Answers, which noticeably changed how the auto industry looked at their digital presence and advertising strategies.

When I moved to Mountain View, I brought the same approach with me. I combined detailed research with real-world business use. It wasn’t always easy. Some markets doubted data-focused methods, and it took strength to balance global work with personal life. Those struggles, though, pushed me to find new ideas and stay focused on making a real difference.

Having said that, what excites you outside your role of leading strategy at Google? 

For me, it is about giving back to society. I have learned a lot from various markets and some very intelligent minds in the advertising industry. So, I believe this is my time to share such information. At IMT Ghaziabad, I sit on the advisory board for their Marketing Area and I have an opportunity to work with professors to prepare the next generation of leaders to work in an industry that is always changing. It is my passion to assist in shaping academics in this manner, as the industry can only become stronger when we invest in its future leaders.

I am also deeply energized by my Senior Membership in the E-Commerce & Digital Marketing Association (ECDMA). It connects me with a global community of innovators and leaders shaping the future of digital commerce. What excites me most is the opportunity to exchange ideas across industries and geographies, contribute to setting new standards in digital marketing, and mentor emerging professionals in the field. It allows me to extend my impact beyond my day-to-day work, helping advance the industry while being inspired by the breakthroughs and perspectives of peers worldwide.

I also facilitate sessions for the “I Am Remarkable” program, empowering underrepresented groups to recognize and celebrate their achievements. I also advocate for mental health in internal forums. These efforts are deeply meaningful to me, as I believe the most impactful brands and leaders succeed not only through results, but also through compassion and inclusion.

Lastly, when you think about the future, what’s the next big step in branding and advertising? 

We’re moving into a time where brand and performance will mix more than ever. However, there’s still the danger of focusing too much on quick results. The next big thing is pulling it all together, tying brand campaigns, performance efforts, and business goals into one system. Picture linking the creativity of a YouTube ad to how much money it brings in or figuring out how top-level storytelling builds lasting loyalty.