Dentsu Launches The Brand Reset to Reframe Video’s Role in Brand Growth

Dentsu has launched The Brand Reset, a major new study challenging how the industry currently values video. At a time when marketing has been challenged to increasingly shift investments towards performance metrics such as clicks, conversions and impressions, The Brand Reset argues that brand building has been neglected.

Developed in partnership with Kantar and Lumen Research, the study is the industry’s largest dataset of its kind and the first to establish a quantified link between attention, brand equity and both short- and long-term sales outcomes. Drawing on analysis across ten next-generation video platforms alongside Linear TV in the US and UK, the research provides new evidence for how modern video environments contribute to sustained brand growth.

The study builds on dentsu’s earlier Attention Economy research, extending its focus beyond short-term outcomes to demonstrate how attention translates into lasting commercial impact. In doing so, it provides marketers with the quantitative proof points that have often been missing in conversations with CFOs and boards, where long-term brand investment has struggled to compete with more immediately measurable performance channels.

Headline reveals from The Brand Reset include: 

1. Digital video (including short-form formats) delivers multi-year brand building effects. Directly challenging the widely held assumption that Linear TV is the only channel capable of driving long-term growth.
2. A single exposure has the potential to result in long-term brand building. It’s estimated that a single exposure to a brand’s ad could result in, on average, a 1%-5% increase in sales with the brand over the following three years.
3. Connected TV has the power to build brands on par with Linear TV. This marks an important structural change in the media landscape that reflects how audience behavior has evolved and upends the perceived superiority of Linear TV.
4. Second for second – voluntary attention works harder than forced attention.  While skippable formats have lower impact when viewed for 1-2 seconds, their impact surpasses non-skippables if attention is sustained, i.e., people choose to watch the ad instead of moving on, or away, from it.
5. Attention matters but doesn’t have to be continuous. Moore attention reaps greater brand-building effects. However, after 20 seconds, attention delivers little additional impact, which calls into question the assumption that more attention is always better.

“While marketers intuitively recognize that brand building captures attention and is critical in creating long-term demand, achieving stakeholder buy-in for it has often fallen short and performance-driven investments have felt like a safer bet, too often taking precedence,” said Will Swayne, Global President, Media, dentsu. “The Brand Reset finally offers marketing leaders a framework to make a quantifiable and tangible case for why and how to invest in building their brand through video in a world where planning for attention is paramount.”

Beyond the findings themselves, dentsu has integrated the dataset underpinning the study into its Global Planner tool, enabling teams to apply attention-based insights directly to channel and format-level decision making. This allows planners to move beyond traditional distinctions such as linear versus digital or short-form versus long-form and instead design media strategies based on how different environments contribute to brand growth over time.

Marketing effectiveness expert Les Binet, who advised on the research, said, “The Brand Reset has re-legitimized long-term brand building in digital video. It gives planners a coherent way to think about modern video effects and reopens an important industry conversation about long-term value.”

The findings challenge several long-standing assumptions about how video advertising works in the modern media landscape. While television continues to deliver strong brand-building effects, digital video, including short-form formats, is shown to generate multi-year brand impact, directly countering the idea that its role is limited to driving clicks. Crucially, the research demonstrates that a single exposure to video advertising can contribute to long-term sales uplift, with modelling suggesting an estimated 1%–5% increase in brand spend over a three-year period compared to no exposure. The study also highlights a structural shift in viewing behavior. Connected TV environments are now capable of delivering long-term brand effects close to those of Linear TV, reflecting the migration of audiences towards streaming platforms and the growing maturity of their advertising ecosystems.

This comes at a time when CMOs are navigating a growing set of tensions. According to dentsu’s 2025 CMO Report, marketers are under increasing pressure to deliver short-term results while proving long-term growth, balancing the need to win the algorithm with the risk of losing brand distinctiveness, and being asked to predict future performance with data that often lacks clarity. The Brand Reset reframes how the industry should think about attention itself. While higher levels of attention are associated with stronger brand outcomes, the research finds that returns begin to diminish beyond approximately 20 seconds of active viewing. This challenges the premium often placed on longer formats and suggests that the quality of attention, rather than its duration alone, is what drives effectiveness: The findings also point to a more nuanced understanding of skippable formats. While these formats can deliver lower impact at very short viewing times, they can outperform non-skippable formats when viewers choose to continue watching, highlighting the growing importance of voluntary attention as a driver of brand equity; attention matters but doesn’t have to be continuous.

“Ultimately, The Brand Reset, amplifies dentsu’s depth of knowledge in attention and enables our media experts to evaluate their planning choices holistically. It breaks down barriers in historically disjointed planning approaches,” concluded Will Swayne. “Our dataset enables advanced planning on a level playing field with teams able to deploy a common planning currency and a consistent set of business metrics represented by Kantar Brand Power.”