Media Effectiveness with Nick Pugh on The Six Sells Podcast

Mike Nicholson

In this episode of The Six Sells Podcast I spoke to Nick Pugh about media effectiveness and attention. Nick had some insightful answers about media effectiveness, and how it can be planned, bought and measured. Here’s a few of the insights you will find in this episode:

Effectiveness means incrementality at a price

Media effectiveness isn’t activity - it’s incrementality against a KPI, and what you paid to get it. Start by stating the trade you want to make: profit now, growth later, or a mix. Then judge the plan against that choice.

Reach still matters, but effective reach matters more - placements that create time in view and attention. On brand, consideration is a strong lead indicator. When it moves, base sales usually follow.

Measurement that changes decisions

Ebiquity use MMM/econometrics to attribute incrementality across channels and inside channels. When a sharper answer is needed, they run geo tests designed to be nationally representative, then scale the winner.

Short term isn’t the whole story. They link spend → brand metrics → base sales to get total-term payback.

Creative is a multiplier. On like-for-like media, stronger creative can deliver roughly 2.2x the return of weaker work. If you ignore creative, you’ll misread channels.

The best measurement output isn’t a deck - it’s budget moves with owners and dates.

Attention as a planning signal

Ebiquity matched their Profitability 2 ROI database (c. 140+ brands, 14 categories, ~£1.7–£1.8bn spend) with Lumen Research’s attention benchmarks. The relationship was “very, very strong” and Nick said that “attention is a leading indicator of ROI profit”

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There are over 100 episodes and counting, and the biggest episodes have achieved 30,000 views across all platforms.

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Content published by executives consistently reaches more people, earns more engagement, and attracts more meaningful responses than content published by brands.

With that in mind, we work with CEOs and senior leadership teams to create consistent, credible content that reaches the people who matter most to your business.

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