How to Allocate Media Advertising Budgets for Maximum ROI

A February 2026 study underscores the importance of data-led planning in media advertising, as it finds that certain media channels perform most effectively when funded at the right scale.

A study by analytics firm Analytic Edge examined how Philippine advertisers reassess media investment decisions amid tightening budgets, declining television consumption, and rising pressure to demonstrate measurable return on investment (ROI).

In a February 26 event held by adobo Magazine, the C5i subsidiary said that determining sufficiency (defined as investing at the level required for a channel to perform optimally) is a discipline for effective media planning.

Insights shared during the session were drawn from Marketing Mix Modeling (MMMs), which analyzes all past sales data to figure out which parts of a company’s advertising worked relative to everything else. 

The insights were drawn from 11 fast-moving consumer goods brands in the country, five of which were TikTok-sponsored. Six were from Analytic Edge’s database.

Traditional budget habits may no longer match how people consume media today or which channels are driving additional sales, said Padmanabhan Ramaswamy, Analytic Edge’s managing director for SouthEast Asia.

The challenge for brands, he said, is not only in identifying high-ROI channels, but in aligning budget allocations with modeled marginal return.

A modeled marginal return predicts how much a company gains if it adds an incremental unit of investment.

“What this study highlights is not simply which platform performs well, but whether budgets are aligned with modeled sales contribution[s],” Padmanabhan said. “Media sufficiency is about investing at the right scale so that channels can deliver their full potential, rather than being underfunded and misunderstood.”

Investment vs. Performance

According to the study, television consumption in the Philippines continues to decline, even as it still commands a dominant share of media investment. 

The share of media spend for short-form video platforms like TikTok, meanwhile, rose to 17% from 1% in five years, signaling its emergence as a core channel.

This growth reflects shifting consumer attention patterns toward mobile-first and short-form video environments.

The analysis also found that while digital video platforms account for a growing share of consumer attention, advertiser investment has not always kept pace with their performance contribution.

Across the modeled brands, TikTok led ROI performance in about 70% of the models, delivering returns of around 2.2x on average, outperforming both digital and traditional media in the aggregated dataset. 

In the consumer packaged goods category, TikTok recorded relative ROI levels of 2.42x and up to 4.7 times that of other media in certain comparisons. In F&B, TikTok ROI was about 1.7 times that of total media.

Despite this, the study indicated that TikTok accounts for 5-6% of total FMCG media spend, suggesting potential under-allocation relative to its modeled contribution.

The analysis demonstrated that many brands are operating below sufficiency levels, particularly in high-impact, full-funnel digital channels. 

For TikTok, optimal performance was observed when investment levels reached between 86% and 160% of current spend, indicating substantial headroom before diminishing returns set in. 

Underinvestment, rather than channel inefficiency, is a key driver of lost ROI.

The study also examined how much new audience exposure is added when TikTok is used alongside TV. It found that audience overlap between TikTok and linear TV is about 48-49%, meaning that more than half of the people reached on TikTok are not fully duplicated by television. 

This suggests TikTok is not repeating the same viewers, but extending reach to additional audiences.

When both channels were used together, the modeling showed an incremental awareness lift of approximately +24.6%, indicating that the combination delivers stronger total impact than TV alone. 

This reinforces the idea that diversified sufficiency-led media investment can improve overall media effectiveness, not just overlapping results, when integrated thoughtfully into the broader mix.

One of the takeaways from the February 26 discussion is that marketing success depends less on experimentation and more on sufficiency-based investment decisions based on analytics.

These insights are expected to inform ongoing conversations as advertisers and agencies refine media strategies for the year ahead.

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