When Brand Meets Performance: Rethinking the Marketing Funnel with Paramount’s Emily Huo

During Advertising Week, Paramount hosted the Brand Innovators Marketing Leadership Summit at its NYC headquarters, convening top marketing leaders to explore the evolving relationship between brand and performance.

One of the standout sessions featured Emily Huo, Head of SMB Advertising at Paramount, in a panel titled “When Brand Meets Performance: Are Marketers Missing the Touchpoints That Shape Behavior?”

Turns out, the answer is yes - but fortunately, there are new tools and fresh thinking that can help marketers close the gap and unlock more meaningful results.

Joined by Jason Ing (Typeface), Tim Finnegan (Verisk), and Keri Zuckerman (Kinesso), Emily offered a fresh perspective on how marketers can bridge the gap between long-term brand building and short-term performance goals - especially in the context of Connected TV (CTV).

Read on for some of our favorite takeaways from the session.

Takeaway 1: Prioritize brand AND performance, not brand OR performance

During the panel, Emily challenged the notion that brand marketing and performance marketing are inherently at odds. She explained how CTV combines premium reach with digital measurability, allowing advertisers to track actions taken after a viewer sees an ad - whether it's a website visit or a purchase.

This “AND” mindset, as Emily calls it, is central to Paramount Ads Manager’s approach to helping marketers build brand equity while driving real business outcomes.

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Takeaway 2: Match Your Marketing to How People Actually Spend Their Day

Emily highlighted a key disconnect in how today’s marketers are still allocating their budgets. She shared data that U.S. adults spend twice as much time watching TV as they do on social media, yet most heavily over-index on social platforms.

Emily urged marketers to rethink overlooked moments in the consumer journey (like TV viewing and the influence of word-of-mouth referrals) and align media spend with actual behavior.

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Takeaway 3: Extend The Impact of Your TV Ads with Performance Multiplier

Emily gave the audience a sneak peek into Performance Multiplier, a new product feature in Paramount Ads Manager that helps businesses amplify their ad campaigns across over 9,000 trusted digital networks.

With just a click, advertisers can extend their reach to premium publisher websites and track post-view engagement, all from a single dashboard. It’s a powerful way to turn awareness into action and make CTV work harder for performance. Try it out >

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For founders, CMOs, brand directors, and media buyers navigating a fragmented media landscape, Emily’s insights offer a roadmap for rethinking the funnel. CTV advertising platforms like Paramount Ads Manager are becoming the go-to solutions for marketers who want to connect storytelling with performance, and connect the dots between awareness and action.