Paid Advertising
Building a full-funnel channel mix that compounds
Most contractors pour budget into the few homeowners ready to remodel today and ignore the many more who will renovate next year. Mapping channels to buying stages, then sequencing them, is how spend stops resetting every month and starts compounding.
At any given moment only about 5% of your market is ready to buy, a finding from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute that reshapes how a channel mix should be built. Demand-capture channels like search harvest the homeowners actively looking for a remodeler today; demand-generation channels like YouTube, Meta, and display build memory in the homeowners who will renovate later. Run only the first and you fight rival contractors over the same scarce "kitchen remodeler near me" clicks. Run both, in sequence, and each channel feeds the next. The levers are matching channels to stages, splitting budget, sequencing the journey, and measuring assisted contribution rather than last click.
Sort every channel into capture or generation
Channels do one of two jobs. Demand capture meets people who already want the thing: Google Search and Shopping sit here because the user types intent into the box. That is why search delivers the highest returns of any campaign type, with high-intent search ROAS benchmarked around 5:1 versus roughly 2:1 for Google's blended average. Capture is efficient but capped. You can only harvest as much demand as exists.
Demand generation creates the want before the search. YouTube reaches over 2.5 billion monthly users, Facebook's ads reach about 2.2 billion, and TikTok's ad audience is near 1.6 billion, all at CPMs a fraction of a search click. These channels do not convert on the spot. They plant the brand so that when need arrives, the buyer searches for you by name. WellBuilt sorts every line item into one of these two buckets before touching a budget, because the two are not interchangeable.
Where the major channels sit:
- Demand capture: Google Search, Google Shopping, Microsoft Ads, branded search
- Demand generation: YouTube, Meta, TikTok, Google Display, programmatic CTV
- Hybrid: Performance Max and Demand Gen blend both, so judge them on incremental lift
- B2B specialist: LinkedIn for role and company targeting, higher cost, higher quality
- Retargeting: a bridge that re-engages generation audiences down toward capture
Split budget across the funnel, not all at the bottom
The instinct is to spend where conversions show up, which means the bottom. That starves the top and the whole system stops growing. Binet and Field's analysis of 996 IPA case studies found that splitting roughly 60% to brand building and 40% to activation maximizes combined short and long term profit. The ratio is a starting point, not a law: newer entrants tilt toward 70/30 brand, while established brands with strong existing demand can run closer to 40/60.
Read your own numbers before you copy a ratio. An established remodeler in busy season leans harder on capture while demand is high; a newer builder nobody in the area searches for yet has to build the name recognition first. The practical test is simple. If your branded search volume is flat and non-brand capture costs keep climbing, you are out of demand to harvest and underinvested at the top. Move budget up the funnel until branded queries start to rise.
Sequence channels in the order buyers move
A channel mix is a sequence, not a pie chart. Buyers rarely convert on first contact. Recent journey data puts the average B2B deal at dozens of touchpoints across several channels, with buyers now using six to ten interaction channels on the way to a purchase. Generation channels run first and continuously to build the audience; retargeting and capture catch that audience as intent sharpens.
The proof that the order matters shows up in branded search. Google's own lift studies have measured a single YouTube campaign driving a 62% lift in searches on Google and YouTube alongside a 30% lift in new users. Display and video create the demand that search then captures, often weeks later. WellBuilt builds the mix as a relay: video and social warm the audience, retargeting keeps the brand present, and search closes the people those upper-funnel channels sent looking.
Capture harvests the 5% buying today; generation builds the 95% who buy later. A mix that compounds funds both.
Add specialist channels when the math earns it
Microsoft Ads is the easiest expansion once Google capture is maxed. Its average CPC runs roughly 30% below Google, and its audience skews older and higher-income, with nearly 40% of users in households above $100,000. Same intent, cheaper clicks, less competition. For B2B, LinkedIn buys precision: targeting by job title, company, and industry that no other platform matches. You pay for it, with CPCs commonly $5 to $8 and often higher on narrow audiences, but lead quality usually justifies the premium.
Programmatic and connected TV extend generation reach as budgets scale. Programmatic now accounts for over 90% of US digital display buying, and programmatic CTV spend is growing around 25% a year. The rule for adding any channel is the same: only when the channels you already run are saturated, and only when you can measure whether the new one adds incremental conversions rather than reshuffling credit.
Measure assisted contribution, not last click
Last-click attribution is why full-funnel mixes get killed before they compound. It hands all the credit to whatever the buyer touched last, almost always a capture channel, and reports the YouTube or display campaign that started the journey as a failure. Industry estimates suggest more than half of revenue can be misattributed under last-click, and only about a fifth of marketers trust it to reflect a channel's true long-term impact. Judge generation channels on last click and you will defund the engine feeding your conversions.
Switch the measurement frame. In GA4, the assisted-conversion and data-driven attribution views redistribute credit toward the upper-funnel channels that initiate journeys, and when advertisers make that switch they routinely find generic and video campaigns were worth far more than last click showed. Pair that with incrementality and lift studies: hold a channel out, watch what happens to total conversions, and you measure what it actually adds rather than the credit it happens to grab.
Key takeaways
- Sort every channel into demand capture or demand generation first; the two jobs are not interchangeable and should not share a budget logic.
- Use 60/40 brand-to-activation as a starting split, then adjust toward more brand for new entrants and more activation for established demand.
- Run generation channels continuously and let capture close the audience they create; a mix is a sequence, not a single pie chart.
- Add Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn, or programmatic only after existing channels saturate and only when you can measure incremental lift.
- Judge upper-funnel channels on assisted conversions and holdout tests, never on last click, or you will defund what feeds your conversions.
SourcesEhrenberg-Bass Institute / LinkedIn B2B Institute, 95-5 rule, 2021 · Binet & Field, The Long and the Short of It, IPA (996 case studies), 2013 · Google Ads Help, Google Display Network reach, 2024 · Gartner, B2B buying journey interaction channels, 2024 · DataReportal / We Are Social, YouTube, Meta, and TikTok ad reach, 2024-2025 · WordStream / LocaliQ and Store Growers, search and shopping ROAS benchmarks, 2024-2025 · Google, YouTube Brand Lift and Search Lift case data, 2024 · Searchlab / Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft Ads CPC and audience data, 2024-2026 · eMarketer / Statista, US programmatic and CTV ad spend, 2024
Questions, answered straight.
How should I split budget between demand generation and demand capture?
Start near the Binet and Field 60/40 split, roughly 60% to brand and generation and 40% to capture and activation, then adjust to your situation. A new brand nobody searches for yet should weight more toward generation; an established brand with strong existing demand can run closer to 40/60. Watch branded search volume as your signal: if it is flat while capture costs climb, shift budget up the funnel.
When is it worth adding Microsoft Ads or LinkedIn?
Add Microsoft Ads once Google Search capture is saturated; its CPCs run about 30% lower and reach an older, higher-income audience, so it is often the cheapest incremental capture you can buy. Reach for LinkedIn when you sell B2B and need targeting by job title, company, or industry that other platforms cannot match. Expect to pay a premium, commonly $5 to $8 per click, and justify it with lead quality, not click volume.
Why do my YouTube and display campaigns look like they lose money?
Because last-click attribution gives all the credit to the search or shopping click that closed the sale, not the video that started the journey. Those upper-funnel channels create demand that converts later, often through branded search weeks afterward. Look at assisted conversions and data-driven attribution in GA4, and run holdout tests to see what total conversions do when you pause the channel, before you decide it does not work.
Can I just run search ads and skip the top of the funnel?
You can, but you are competing for the 5% of the market that is in-market today, and so is every rival, which is why capture clicks keep getting more expensive. Search can only harvest demand that already exists; it cannot create it. If your branded search volume is flat, that is the symptom of an empty top of funnel. Adding generation channels is what refills the pipeline search depends on.
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