We B2B marketers love efficiency.

One recording becomes 20 clips. One campaign video becomes six ad variations. One asset gets resized, reformatted and distributed across every channel we can think of.

Look at us go. SO efficient.

And listen, I'm all for getting more mileage out of good content. But I've been thinking about something lately:

What if our obsession with production efficiency is actually costing us more in media performance?

Some new research has me asking exactly that. Let’s dive in.

A recent Google-commissioned study by Amplified Intelligence tested the same ad across eight platforms.

On one, it earned 24.2 seconds of attention. On another? Just 0.2 seconds.

That's a 121× difference. With the exact same creative.

And the implications get even more interesting.

A study from Neurons and EMERGE, involving more than 7,600 participants, found that video banners averaged just 1.7 seconds of attentive viewing. Enough to reinforce a brand, but hardly enough to tell a compelling story.

Meanwhile, TVision's 2026 research found that even ad length, frequency and placement within a commercial break can significantly influence attention.

See where I'm going with this?

We're spending real money distributing creative across environments that fundamentally change how people experience it.

Yet we're often making those creative decisions long before we've figured out the media plan.

Too often, we're separating decisions that belong together. And that’s where I think we need to rethink our approach.

We invest in audience research, strategy and production. Then, somewhere along the way, we start figuring out how to squeeze those assets into our media plan.

And suddenly we're asking one piece of creative to perform across environments that demand completely different things from viewers.

It's efficient from a production standpoint.

But what happens when we spend thousands distributing creative that wasn't designed for the environment in which people encounter it?

We may be optimizing production costs at the expense of media effectiveness.

Worth noting: The Advertising Research Foundation's June study, examining four national campaigns, also found that higher attention doesn't consistently translate into higher brand lift. Reach, repetition and media investment matter, too.

So the answer isn't simply buying more attention. It's getting smarter about what we're asking our creative to accomplish.

Before the next shoot, I'd challenge marketers to ask three questions:

1. Where will this campaign actually run?

Beyond platform names, consider the viewing experience. Is someone scrolling between meetings, actively researching a solution or watching on a larger screen? Is your content showing up between a video of a cute dog and a nomad influencer? 

2. What can our creative realistically accomplish there?

A brief exposure might be enough to establish recognition. A more involved message may need an environment where someone is prepared (and willing) to spend time with it.

3. Where is distinct creative worth the investment?

Maybe one master recording can support the entire campaign. Great.

But maybe the paid social concept deserves a different script, not just a shorter edit. Maybe the YouTube asset needs a completely different narrative structure.

The goal isn't to produce more for the sake of producing more.

It's to invest in creative differences that justify their cost through better campaign outcomes.

Production efficiency doesn't always equal campaign efficiency. Batch recording is always something I’ll stand behind, but the experience should be woven into the campaign media plan before your next recording date.