Targeting Values Over Demographics Doubles Ad Performance
Marketers have long targeted consumers by age, income, and location. That approach is becoming obsolete.
New research from WARC and Aletheia shows that ads aligned with people’s core values achievement, purpose, tradition outperform standard campaigns by substantial margins. In a study of over 5,000 US adults, values-based ads saw preference scores jump as high as 123 points against a 100-point baseline. Performance improved by 1.8 to 2 times on average. The findings suggest that understanding what motivates consumers matters more than knowing their demographics. As one data point makes clear: adding values to targeting improved prediction accuracy by up to 193 percent for certain audience segments.
WARC research shows campaigns that embed Values-Driven Marketing unlock ad preference, likeability, relevance and performance
VDM can uplift ad preference up to 123 points vs. a 100-point average
Ads aligned with an individual’s dominant Values consistently win preference
Stronger Values drive stronger responses
Values-aligned messaging boosts ad likability and relevance
Including Values in the targeting mix increases media effectiveness
5,000 US adults surveyed on Values-aligned ads
The ‘Values’ in Values-Driven Marketing (VDM), as defined by Behavorial Science, refer to desirable – although often unarticulated – motivations that shape how people think and act. They are deep-rooted drivers of consumer behavior and are predictive of how individuals will respond to marketing stimuli.
‘Unlocking the value of Values-Driven Marketing’ is landmark research published today by WARC x Aletheia Marketing and Media brought to you by LIONS Advisory, highlighting the potential of VDM. It validates that VDM leads to meaningful lifts in ad preference, likability, perceived relevance and performance. It shows how VDM enables brands to drive higher ad performance through optimized targeting, media and messaging decisions.
“Understanding the motivation behind audience behavior and finding ways to inspire action is critical. Alongside our partners at Aletheia, we have the evidence to show what a Values-driven approach can offer and how to apply it in the real world across audiences, media, messaging and measurement. The opportunity is compelling.”
Imaad Ahmed, Principal Strategist, LIONS Advisory and Head of Advisory WARC
The most effective marketing is built on deep human understanding. This research proves that when audiences are defined by their values and messaging is precisely aligned, ads perform significantly better. Values-Driven Marketing is emerging as a scalable, repeatable and performance-proven discipline for modern marketers in an era of Agentic AI.”
Alisa Miller, Chief AI Officer, Aletheia, Co-Founder, Pluralytics and Lead Inventor, AI VDM Patent
“We’ve spent years exploring how values shape marketing performance, and this research confirms what we’ve seen with our clients time and again: when brands connect with people around what truly matters to them, engagement deepens and conversions follow. Consistently delivering the right message to the right audience—grounded in authenticity and shared values—is what transforms marketing into a force for meaningful connection and growth.”
Chris Schembri, Founder and CEO, Aletheia,
New research: The dynamics of Values-Driven Marketing
Using controlled testing, the research takes a deep-dive into how audiences perceive and react to VDM.
Research objectives
Do people respond to VDM in similar ways regardless of category’s
The degree to which someone holds a particular Value predictive of response levels
Can the different creative factors contributing to the effectiveness of VDM be isolated
Does VDM drive both short- and long-term brand demand.
Methodology
The six Values that most directly influence brand affinity, purchasing decisions and loyalty, and therefore are of greatest relevance to marketers, are: achievement, freedom, pleasure, purpose, security and tradition.
Following the research, a new model combining behavioral science and artificial intelligence, shows how VDM can improve advertising effectiveness to help brands overcome attention scarcity, establish relevance, spark emotional resonance and target with precision to drive higher results.
Operationalizing Values-Driven Marketing: A new playbook for brands
There are four areas of focus for marketers wanting to put VDM into practice:
Audience intelligence
Use Values-based research to identify priority segments and incremental opportunities, underlying consumer needs and wants, and competitor mapping.
Media intelligence
Use Values-driven targeting to maximize reach and optimize frequency, analyse placement and partnership opportunities, and include performance modeling capabilities.
Messaging intelligence
For a significant competitive edge, align Values-driven messaging with key audience motivations and brand business KPIs, and implement real-time testing capabilities for content optimization.
Impact intelligence
Values-driven marketing can help create and refine short- and longer-term benchmarks, evaluate actual versus predicted performance, and establishes continuous feedback loops to maximize campaign effectiveness.
About Values-Driven Marketing
VDM drives performance uplifts of 1.8X to 2X on average
Brands strongly aligned with the Values that matter most to their audience build trust and foster deeper, lasting connections – especially when supported by ownable, memorable brand assets that consistently show up coherently across all touchpoints.
The research found that by transmitting the right signals to the right ValuesType drives performance uplifts of 1.8X to 2X on average.
Jennifer Posnikoff, SVP, Global Brand Growth and Experience, Virgin, says: “If you get Values right, you build long-term brand equity while still delivering short-term performance.”
Values-Driven Marketing responds to changes in the consumer, shopper and media landscapes
Heightened competition, growing ROI pressures and the constant requirement to do more with less mean marketers need to make more accurate media choices and better-informed messaging decisions.
Brands that apply VDM can better respond to shifts in:
Consumer’s decision-making criteria
Brand trust is now a critical competitive advantage. VDM creates the emotional resonance that builds this trust. Ipsos research shows people that buy brands that reflect their personal values has risen from 53% in 2023 to 69% in 2024.
Shopper behaviors
Brands on social platforms and retail media networks are intent on reducing the path-to-purchase time. VDM works across impulse and considered purchases by delivering clear, compelling signals tailored to consumer motivations by triggering emotional responses, stimulating interest and de-risking purchase decisions.
Media environments
In recent years there has been a shift towards ‘performance’ channels. WARC research outlined in ‘The Multiplier Effect’ shows switching from a performance-only to combined brand-building strategies boosts total revenue by a median of 90%. VDM provides additional unifying force by focusing on audience motivations.
Values-Driven Marketing delivers strategic and executional benefits
VDM in marketing, and the insights from Behavioral Science that underpin it, is an emerging practice with clear advantages: it provides unified answers to the fundamental questions of “who are we targeting?”, “what do we want to stand for?” and “how will we achieve our goals?”
These strategic benefits can be translated into day-to-day execution. AI-powered advances in audience profiling, media targeting, messaging analysis and impact measurement, enable brands to operationalize VDM at scale.
The full report is available to read here. A relatively new discipline, the study outlines why VDM is a valuable addition to the marketing toolbox, features case studies of brands that are successfully applying VDM, and how to apply VDM to maximise effectiveness. A WARC podcast with Aletheia will follow with a deep-dive into the research findings.
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