Are marketers ready to reimagine the funnel?

Like video stores, the typewriter and (some might say) skinny jeans, some things just aren’t meant to last. Millennials might have killed the department store and cable, but it’s younger consumers — especially Gen Zers — who have challenged the traditional marketing funnel.

With the rise of e-commerce, connected TV (CTV) and social media, today’s consumers move fluidly across digital channels. The marketing funnel — which represents the step-by-step process of leading someone toward a purchase — doesn’t fully reflect the omnichannel world where our attention, interest, desire, action and loyalty are constantly merging, according to experts.

It’s natural, then, that the concept of the funnel has evolved, with many marketers calling for a new model. Some have reimagined the funnel as a seesaw, a pinball machine, a flattening disk or a Hankins Hexagon, the last of which illustrates the customer journey as a series of interconnected stages. But the concept gaining the most traction is the infinity loop.

DeLu Jackson, EVP and CMO of ADT, described the thinking behind the infinity loop on The Current Podcast in June 2024.

“People are gathering information pre, during, even after they purchase,” he said. “They continue to gather information, reaffirm and optimize their choices. It’s not a funnel that goes to the bottom and people stop. I think people continue to consume information and insights. So, I think we have to be always on and omnipresent to meet those needs.”

The concept of the traditional marketing funnel is attributed to Elias St. Elmo Lewis, an advertising pioneer and Advertising Hall of Fame inductee, who developed the AIDA model (awareness, interest, desire and action) in 1898. His motto: “Attract attention, maintain interest, create desire.”

His theory eventually led to the creation of the first sales funnel in 1924, which models a consumer journey through the buying process.

The four stages of the funnel — awareness (when the consumer is hooked), interest and desire (the mid-funnel where the consumer is interested and starts to engage with the product) and finally action (the bottom of the funnel, where the consumer makes a purchase).

This served as a logical model for reaching the expanding middle class throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries in an America that was steadily growing with newfound purchasing power and products — from Henry Ford’s Model T to Steve Jobs’ iPod.

Beth Ann Kaminkow, global chief commerce officer and New York CEO of agency VML, tells The Current that the way brands and agencies work with each other was modeled on the funnel.

When the idea of funnel was first formed, the emphasis was on creating general, overarching ads that could reach wide swaths of people at once. Specialized agencies would then create ads for the different stages of the funnel to appear on TV, billboards, radio and in the mail. It was business as usual until the mobile revolution of the 2000s, says Kaminkow.

The proliferation of digital channels changed the customer journey, including how people discover and buy products.

“The way we used to think about the path to purchase isn’t a linear path. The consumer journey is very different for almost every consumer. That alone gives us a clue that you have to stop thinking about things in terms of a funnel,” says Kaminkow.

In the pre-digital era, someone might see a top-of-funnel ad — designed to stoke awareness — on TV or a billboard, and later recall that ad when they encountered a product at a department store. Today, consumers may discover a product while streaming a TV show and buy it immediately, eliminating the mid-funnel entirely.

In today’s omnichannel world, people read news, entertain themselves, purchase goods and communicate with their peers across a variety of digital channels, all melding together on a handful of devices, especially smartphones. In fact, 61% of U.S. consumers say they spend their online time on the open internet (more than five hours a day), compared to 39% of time spent within walled gardens, according to 2024 GlobalWebIndex data looking at the first three quarters of the year.

“With streaming, with being constantly on the phones, always on the go, we’re constantly bouncing in different stages of these considerations and purchases and everything else,” says George Popstefanov, co-founder and CEO of PMG. “And so, the one thing that is true is we have to enhance the experience. We have to authentically engage with consumers wherever they are. We cannot think in a boxed silo anymore.”

Parbinder Dhariwal, VP and GM of CVS’ retail-media network CVS Media Exchange, says the onslaught of retail media has only expedited the funnel’s collapse. As the amount of consumer data has grown from the use of connected devices, retailers and marketers are better able to serve more personalized ads to consumers across the channels they use, which gives them a better window to connect online ads with online sales, and even in-store sales. For instance, Dhariwal tells The Current Podcast that 52% of CVS’ web and app users start their journey via a digital device and then make a purchase at a physical store within 48 hours.

This seamless execution of marketing and media to sales is something customers themselves are asking for. According to VML’s 2024 The Future Shopper report, 61% of global shoppers want seamless communication across sales channels. So far, brands and retailers are not living up to expectations. Only 51% of consumers believe brands and retailers are delivering when it comes to omnichannel, with 56% stating they will not shop with retailers, brands or marketplaces that do not match their expectations of online shopping, according to the report.

Global shoppers also want more entertaining online experiences, want to get from inspiration to purchase quicker, prefer purpose-driven brands, and want more immersive and creative shopping experiences.

Marketers have an opportunity to adapt the fundamentals of marketing with the reality of omnichannel life, ultimately harnessing the infinity loop to inspire new strategies.

Dhariwal says marketers must show the value of connecting with consumers across their entire journey, at various touchpoints, with “consistent personalization” to set themselves “apart from the rest of the industry.”

“There’s no funnel anymore. Your point of delivery-of-message to point-of-purchase is shortened so much — there’s no awareness, there’s no consideration — you just go straight down to the bottom of the funnel to purchase the moment you see an ad,” says Dhariwal. “So we have to think about how we can continue to add value to that process.”

The solution could lie in omnichannel campaigns — those that consolidate ads that appear across multiple channels, whether it’s CTV, audio, digital out-of-home, display, etc. An October study — conducted by The Trade Desk Intelligence, PA Consulting and a diverse group of advertisers across various industries — found that omnichannel campaigns are more effective and efficient than media distributed in silos, which can often lead to ad fatigue.

In fact, after collecting over 120 hours of brain activity for 80 participants in the U.S. and U.K., connected omnichannel campaigns were shown to be 2.2 times less cognitively fatiguing, 1.5 more persuasive, 1.2 times more memorable and 1.5 more immersive, among other points.

Despite this kind of data, old concepts die hard. The funnel remains a fixture in marketing 101 playbooks even as its efectiveness as a metaphor is waning.

“It’s been amazing to me how long it’s taken for [the funnel] to be questioned or potentially die,” says Kaminkow. “It’s always seen as a little bit controversial. We still have old behaviors that are hard to break even when we have data that’s telling us differently.”