“For me Performance Marketing doesn't go without the brand. You will catch some low-hanging fruit, you'll activate two to three acquisition channels and you will see indeed users coming in and they will be instantly profitable — but you won't go very far with that.”

Performance Marketing Always Hits a Ceiling — Brand Is the Only Way Through

Performance marketing yields fast, measurable wins early on, but every channel eventually saturates and CPAs climb. Shireen Khi at Deezer argues the only way to keep scaling is to invest in brand: brand awareness fills the top of funnel so performance campaigns have warm audiences to convert. Without brand investment, you're fighting over the same shrinking pool of high-intent users who already knew you.