“Run Ads, SALE follows”

1. “Run ads, sale follows”. IS IT TRUE

This is an enduring myth.

One belief keeps appearing in almost every marketing conversation:

Run ads & orders follow.

The observation is consistent.

• When ads run and orders come in, people connect the two as cause & effect.
• When orders drop, the first instinct is to spend more.

This is the classic trap of correlation versus causation in marketing measurement.

2. THE PROBLEM

It sounds true but it may not be true, my apology.

The belief feels logical because the timing lines up. However:

Timing is not causation

Tommy Nguyen (Hthinh)

Consider this: some businesses grow steadily without running a single paid campaign.

Word of mouth, distribution strength, seasonal demand, and product-market fit drive their sales.

Advertising was never part of the equation.

The only question worth asking: if I invest in advertising, how much does it actually change the outcome compared to doing nothing?

If I invest advertising, how is it different?

❌Most marketers never ask it.

❌Most reports are never built to answer it.

We are told this is how it works.

We follow without objection because it has been written into countless case studies.

3. FROM AGENCY pov

At the agency , reports are built to show connection between spend & outcome.

This serves a specific purpose: demonstrating campaign value to the client.

However, this is not to isolate incremental value from baseline demand.

The gap is that these reports are not designed to isolate incremental value from baseline demand.

Often, the sale would have happened regardless, but the ad campaign takes the credit.

4. FROM CORPORATE pov

At the corporate level, trade promotions, distribution expansion, & seasonal demand often drive more volume.

Sometimes, these factors have a much higher impact than media efforts.

Because media gets the attribution as it is easier to track. Sometimes, the attribution is unclear or get dilluted.

The problem is that media gets the attribution simply because it is easier to track through digital dashboards and platform reports.

Trade marketing, retail activation, & pricing mechanics rarely appear in the same performance report.

So media looks like the driver when it was often just the most visible channel running at the time.

5. FROM SME- START UP pov

At the SME and startup level, I observed that founders boost a post & see a spike, or viral spike.

Startups need speed and effectiveness, so deep metrics and strategic measurement may not seem like a necessity at first.

Speed matters at this stage, which is understandable.

However, confusing a correlation for a cause leads to budgets built on the wrong foundation.

6. CONSEQUENCES

Gradually, advertising becomes viewed as a forced “added cost” rather than a core “driven value.”

When it is just an added value, it becomes expendable.

This makes advertising highly vulnerable!

When advertising is treated as the primary driver of sale rather than just one contributing factor among many two things happen over time:

1️⃣ First, budgets get misallocated.

Spend increases on channels that look effective but are simply present when demand is already moving.

2️⃣ Second, advertising loses its strategic value.

It becomes a reflex rather than a decision, which makes it the first line item cut when results disappoint.

The true discipline lies in measuring how much value advertising actually adds compared to everything else running simultaneously.

That requires a baseline, a control period, or at the very least, an honest conversation about what else has changed in the business.

We must make a shift in mindset and practice.

Otherwise, the prediction that “advertising will soon be dead” might just become reality.

I broke down the mechanics behind this thinking here: 👉

CORRELATION vs CAUSATION: Trick or Treat?

TOMMY Nguyen (H.Thinh)

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