Rise of performance marketing sparks a rethink on whether it’s still marketing or just sales

New Delhi: Once upon a time, marketing departments used to sound like jazz, unpredictable, expressive, and occasionally chaotic, but always alive. Campaign reviews were about ideas, not dashboards; arguments were about emotion, not attribution models.

Fast forward to today, and the same rooms hum to the rhythm of metrics. Marketers are now part mathematicians, part magicians, juggling dashboards, decoding acronyms, and optimising their way through creativity. Marketing now only speaks the grammar of sales. “What’s the ROAS?” has replaced “What’s the story?”

It’s not that creativity has died. It’s just been made to file a performance report every Friday. But this shift isn’t black or white. 

For some, programmatic and performance marketing represent the future, a data-driven democracy that ensures every rupee spent has a return. For others, it’s a quiet erosion of soul, where persuasion has been reduced to precision and storytelling is starting to sound like sales.

So, what happens when the world’s most emotional business becomes the most measured one?

“Creativity was never meant to be automated”

Shradha Agarwal, Co-founder and Global CEO of Grapes Worldwide, has watched this shift from the frontlines of digital transformation, and she’s not entirely worried, though she’s wary of what’s being lost in translation.

“Programmatic efficiency has paved its way through the way we work, but it has not changed the reason we create. It has introduced structure, accountability and speed, which are all valuable, but creativity was never meant to be automated,” she noted.

Chiming in, Cyrus Shroff, Chief Client Officer, Performics India (part of Publicis Groupe), said the push for programmatic efficiency has undoubtedly changed the creative process, but not necessarily for the worse. 

“The focus on programmatic efficiency has brought a higher level of accountability to the creative process. Earlier, creative and media often worked in separate tracks, one focused on the idea, the other on distribution. Programmatic has forced both to come closer, since delivery and audience targeting now directly influence the kind of creative we produce,” Shroff explained.

“Yes, the process is more data-driven, but not less creative; it’s simply more measurable, agile and contextual. The outcome is not just a message that looks good, but one that actually performs,” he added.

Agarwal, on the other hand, believes that the key lies in how technology is used, not in what it replaces. “This process may start with data and analysis, but the core idea comes from intuition and empathy. When technology is used to inform imagination rather than dictate it, efficiency becomes a creative ally, not a limitation,” she said. 

Agarwal pointed out that while algorithms may predict what people might like, only emotion can make them care. Machines can process patterns, but they can’t interpret heartbreak, nostalgia, or joy,  the raw material of persuasion.

Renting algorithms, losing connection

Agarwal was asked whether brands today are truly buying audiences or merely renting algorithms, a question that cuts right through the industry’s comfort zone.

Responding to it, she said, “There are a lot of brands that rely on algorithms to reach audiences, but this often implies that they are renting visibility rather than earning connection.” 

She added, “Algorithms may tell you who to talk to, but they cannot tell you what to say and how to make people care.”

It’s a subtle but fundamental distinction between reach and resonance, presence and persuasion. You can buy attention, Agarwal suggested, but affection still needs to be earned the old-fashioned way, through trust and storytelling.

“A brand can truly create its own audience when it creates meaning, consistency and emotional recall value. That ownership cannot be coded or rented; it has to be built patiently through stories and shared values,” she emphasised.

Adding perspective, Shroff said the distinction lies not just in the approach but in how brands retain what they learn. “Most brands are doing a bit of both. But the more important question is whether they’re building their own intelligence in the process. Buying audiences was the old media mindset. Renting algorithms is the current operational reality. But if brands don’t capture the learnings from every campaign, they end up starting from zero each time,” he observed.

For the audience, this means seeing ads everywhere but feeling very little connection. For brands, it’s the quiet fear that efficiency might be eating empathy.

“The real edge lies in using first-party data and platform learnings to make smarter, faster decisions. That’s what separates brands that rely on algorithms from those that shape them. The goal shouldn’t just be reached; it should be ownership of learning—that’s what compounds value over time,” Shroff added.

The performance paradox

Devarshi Shah, Chief Growth Officer, OML Entertainment, took a more optimistic view. For him, performance and programmatic marketing haven’t killed creativity; they’ve just made it do cardio.

“Yes, the rise of programmatic has shifted the dial. It means creative needs to work harder: it needs to respond to data, scale across formats, and vary by context. Creative has become more functional in that it has to fit tighter specs, meet dynamic formats, and link to measurable outcomes. But that doesn’t mean less creativity,” he told BestMediaInfo.com.  

Shah compared it to learning how to dance in smaller spaces. “When you’re dealing with tighter formats, real-time data, and audience signals, you must sharpen your idea rather than water it down,” he said.

To him, programmatic isn’t the villain; it’s the gym trainer that makes creativity sweat. “It’s equal parts data and emotion,” he said, calling this moment “a renaissance of sorts,” where automation frees bandwidth but doesn’t replace human insight.

“Optimisation and originality are not opposites”

Shah also challenged the idea that originality and optimisation are enemies. “Let’s flip that question. Why do we see optimisation and originality as two poles when in reality, they should coexist? Unique ideas capture attention and meaning; optimisation ensures they perform, scale, and design for context,” he commented. He described it as “a duet, not a duel.” Originality as the spark, optimisation as the fuel.

Shroff agreed, adding that the issue often stems from how agencies are incentivised. “That’s true to a large extent, and it reflects how the ecosystem has evolved. Clients are under pressure to deliver results, and agency compensation models are designed around those outcomes,” he said.

Still, the industry doesn’t always reward that balance. Agarwal admitted that the obsession with measurable outcomes has tilted the equation. “The drive for optimisation has given us precision and accountability, but it has also taken some focus away from the power of ideas,” she noted. “When creativity is judged only by what can be measured, it starts to play it safe and repeat itself.”

In other words, when every idea must justify itself in data, the risk-taking muscle starts to weaken.

Persuasion versus performance

Poloumi Roy, Chief Marketing Officer, RSH Global, believes marketing’s original purpose, persuasion, is quietly being replaced by conversion.

“Marketing, at its core, is the art of persuasion,” she said. “A salesperson uses methodologies to convert someone into buying a product, while marketing uses communication, across various media, to persuade someone to believe in or desire a brand.”

But as the function evolved, Roy observed, it also got more pretentious. “The more complex the narrative, the more intellectual it sounds, and people start equating complexity with expertise. That’s never been my belief. If I can’t simplify my idea for a consumer who doesn’t care about what I do, I’ve failed,” she said. 

Shroff framed this balance between storytelling and sales differently. “You can keep optimising your media every day, but if people don’t recall or relate to your brand, you’ll always end up paying more to convert them. Good storytelling reduces that friction. It builds familiarity and credibility, which in turn lowers your acquisition cost. So the value of brand storytelling isn’t emotional; it’s a performance enabler. It makes your work harder and more efficient in the long run,” he added. 

Roy, however, warned that programmatic marketing measures behaviour—who clicked, when, and for how long—but not the psyche behind that behaviour. “It tells you that people dropped off after two seconds, but not why they dropped off. That ‘why’ is where marketing should begin,” she noted. 

Her concern? Performance marketing has become a substitute for brand-building rather than a bridge to it. “That’s dangerous. Performance can’t exist without awareness. Marketing has always been performance-driven; the difference now is the timeline,” Roy stated. 

A sunscreen without its logo

To prove her point, Roy recounted an internal experiment that reads like a parable of modern branding.

“I once asked my sales team to take our Joy sunscreen, remove the Joy logo, and sell it as an unbranded product, even with better SPF and quality,” she said. 

“At the end of the quarter, the result was clear. The unbranded sunscreen couldn’t outperform the one with the Joy logo.”

That, she said, is the emotional capital of branding: the trust that transforms a product into a preference. 

“Branding is what turns a commodity into a brand. The logo symbolises a promise of reliability, affordability, trust, or fun. That emotional association drives preference and, ultimately, business,” Roy explained. 

Her conclusion was simple but sharp: “Marketing must reclaim its identity without rejecting the measurability that performance brings.”

“Branding is always about the future”

For Hemal Mathijia, Founder of Oktobuzz, the overlap between sales and marketing isn’t something to resist. It’s simply evolution catching up.

“Sales is a different vertical. Perhaps it has now been transfused so seamlessly with marketing that there’s no fine line left between the two,” he observed. “It’s just become a good, natural mix of both.”

Mathijia, whose agency is splitting into two distinct arms, one for advisory and consulting, the other for creative and digital, said the move reflects marketing’s changing DNA. 

“The creative and digital side will continue to speak the performance-driven language—fast-paced and results-oriented. But the advisory side will have a different rhythm: slower, more thoughtful, and more reflective,” Mathijia noted. 

For him, this separation is not a split but a rebalancing act. “The identity of marketing has already evolved, and it will continue to move forward. It’s not something that can be ‘realised’ and reversed. Branding, by its very nature, is always about the future.”

The human pulse behind the numbers

If there’s one thread running through all these perspectives, it’s this: marketing cannot function without its human pulse. It can be efficient, optimised and automated, but without emotion, it risks becoming a polite form of sales with a fancier vocabulary.

As Agarwal put it, “Automation can process information, but creativity can transform it into feeling. The role of an agency today is to ensure that human insight remains at the centre of every algorithmic interaction.”

Shroff summarised this convergence succinctly: “As automation becomes more powerful, the agency’s value will lie in interpretation, making sure technology enhances creativity rather than replacing it.”

Because at the end of every impression, click or conversion, there’s still a person scrolling, reacting, and judging, not a pixel.

And maybe that’s where the future of marketing truly lies: in remembering that data can show you where people are, but only empathy can tell you why they care.