CMOs know it. In their bones. Brand equity is one of the most powerful levers a business has. It shapes demand before a consumer ever opens a browser. It determines whether a product launch gets traction or gets ignored. It is the reason some brands command a premium and others compete on price alone. And yet... it is almost always the hardest budget to defend.

In January 2007, Steve Jobs walked onto a stage in San Francisco and put up a slide of the competition. The Moto Q. The BlackBerry Pearl. The Nokia E62. The best smartphones the industry had to offer. Then he pointed out what they all had in common: fixed, plastic keyboards. The problem was not that the keyboards were bad. The problem was that they were always there, whether you needed them or not.

For brands with a physical presence, foot traffic has always felt like a meaningful signal. A customer walks through the door. That has to count for something. And it does. But for most of the industry, visitation measurement has been treated as an outcome in itself rather than a piece of a larger story.

Ask any experienced marketer whether brand investment matters and the answer is immediate. Of course it does. Brand shapes demand before a consumer ever enters a purchase decision. It determines whether a new product launch gets traction or gets scrolled past. It is the reason some companies command a premium and others compete on price alone. The challenge has never been whether brand works. The challenge has been proving it in terms that connect to how a business actually measures success. That is starting to change. And the opportunity it creates for marketers is significant.

The food and beverage industry is in the middle of one of its most active acquisition cycles in years. The deals keep coming, and the strategic logic behind them is consistent: large CPG companies are buying growth they can no longer generate organically, snapping up brands that have already won over a consumer base they want access to. But that raises a question that is harder to answer than it looks: when a brand changes hands, does the audience come with it?

The software sector just entered its fourth major sell-off since 2021. Over a trillion dollars in market cap erased. The WCLD cloud index is down 54% over five years while the NASDAQ is up 61% over the same period. The narrative I keep hearing is consistent: AI is coming for SaaS, and it is coming fast. I think that narrative is right. I just think the market is painting with too broad a brush.

Walled gardens have earned their place in the modern media mix. The targeting capabilities inside major platforms and retail media networks are genuinely powerful. The scale is real. The audience data is rich. And for brands looking to reach consumers with precision at the moment they are most likely to act, these environments deliver. But there is an opportunity that even the best walled garden cannot fully capture on its own. Not because of anything wrong with how they are built — but because of what, by definition, they cannot see.

Every brand wants to perform better. But better than what? Better than last quarter? Better than your own forecast? Better than the competition? The answer matters more than most marketing teams acknowledge. A brand can be growing and still be losing.

Jonah Goodhart has a long track record of identifying major industry shifts early. One of the industry’s most trusted advisors and an Attain board member, Goodhart recently shared his top five predictions for 2026. Unsurprisingly, AI sits at the center of all of them.

TikTok is no longer an emerging channel. It is a dominant force in digital advertising, and the brands winning there are not necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones reaching the right people at the right moment. That moment part is harder than it sounds.