Proving Upper Funnel Isn’t the Risk. Ignoring It Is.
By rethinking how upper funnel success was measured, we helped a leading international fashion retailer transform YouTube from a brand channel into a measurable source of commercial growth.
Kurt Geiger
- Industry: Fashion Retail
- Business Model: Ecommerce / Omnichannel Retail
- Growth Stage: Established international retailer
- Campaign Focus: AW25 through to Christmas shipping cut-off
- Budget Tier: 💰💰💰
Operating in one of retail’s most competitive and promotion-heavy environments, the brand needed to balance long-term demand generation with short-term commercial pressure during peak trading
The Challenge
Peak retail periods naturally push investment toward lower-funnel conversion activity. But over-reliance on performance channels creates pressure elsewhere:
- Rising acquisition costs
- Audience saturation
- Short-term optimisation at the expense of future demand
Driving reach was not the challenge. It was proving that upper-funnel activity could deliver measurable business impact during one of the most commercially scrutinised periods of the year.
The Turning Point
Incrementality shaped the strategy from the very beginning.
Rather than relying on platform attribution alone, we partnered with a third-party measurement provider to run a DMA growth market incrementality test across the campaign. This allowed us to measure the true commercial impact YouTube was driving beyond reported platform performance.
Alongside this, brand uplift studies revealed which audiences, creative formats, and messaging approaches were genuinely influencing engagement and consideration during peak trading.
The result was a far more commercial understanding of YouTube’s role across the wider media ecosystem and greater confidence in upper funnel investment moving forward.
- Did short form outperform in-stream on recall?
- Did a specific demographic over-index?
- Did a creative style drive stronger engagement?
What Most Brands Get Wrong
- Judging upper-funnel activity purely on attributed conversions
- Treating YouTube as a reach channel rather than a commercial growth lever
- Optimising for views without understanding incremental business impact
- Scaling lower-funnel spend while underinvesting in future demand generation
What We Did
- Ran a multi-format YouTube strategy across in-stream, bumper, and short-form creative
- Balanced frequency and view objectives to maximise efficient reach without waste
- Partnered with a third-party measurement provider to run a DMA growth market incrementality test
- Used brand uplift studies to identify the strongest-performing demographics, creative variations, and formats
- Optimised activity using incremental business impact, not vanity metrics
The Results
“Proof that attention and commercial impact are not mutually exclusive.”
- 7:1 iROAS from an upper-funnel YouTube strategy
- Competitive CPMs and VTRs maintained throughout peak trading
- Measurable uplift across brand metrics and engagement signals
- Actionable audience and creative insights to improve future campaign efficiency
- Performance strong enough to support always-on YouTube investment moving forward
Before
After
The Real Impact
Peak retail pressure usually pushes brands further toward conversion activity.
Demonstrating measurable commercial impact from upper funnel activity during peak trading gave the business clarity around where YouTube was influencing growth and how future investment could be scaled with confidence.
That shifted upper funnel investment from a brand consideration into a commercially caccountable growth lever.
What This Proves
- Prioritising incrementality from the outset creates a far clearer understanding of where growth is actually coming from, not just where platforms are claiming credit.
- Stronger measurement frameworks lead to more confident investment decisions across creative, media planning, and long term growth strategy.
- YouTube performs significantly harder when creative, audience strategy, and measurement are designed to work together from the beginning.
- Connecting brand and performance activity more effectively reduces the pressure on lower funnel channels to drive growth alone
What Most Brands Get Wrong
- Judging upper-funnel activity purely on attributed conversions
- Treating YouTube as a reach channel rather than a commercial growth lever
- Optimising for views without understanding incremental business impact
- Scaling lower-funnel spend while underinvesting in future demand generation
The Close
Growth is a given.
The real advantage comes from understanding what is influencing it long before conversion happens.
What they say about us?
