A lot of media plans still allocate budget the way they did a decade ago: search gets the lion’s share because "that’s where intent lives." Attention moved. Many plans didn’t.
Intent Doesn’t Start on a Search Bar Anymore
For a huge share of purchase journeys now, discovery happens on a social feed long before anyone types a query into a search engine. By the time a branded search happens, the decision is often already 80% made — search is capturing demand, not creating it.
Rebalancing Without Overcorrecting
This isn’t a call to abandon search — branded and high-intent search terms still convert at the highest rate in most accounts. It’s a call to stop treating upper-funnel social spend as an afterthought when it’s actually generating the demand search later captures.
If your search budget is thriving but your top-of-funnel is thin, you’re watering the fruit and starving the roots.
Not sure your budget matches your funnel?
We build media plans across the full funnel — not siloed channel budgets defended by habit.
Get a media plan reviewThe right split is different for every category — but "the way we’ve always split it" is rarely the right answer anymore.
