Has your marketing funnel collapsed? You're not alone, say media experts at The Drum Live

"The traditional marketing funnel is no longer fit for purpose. That was the clear consensus at The Drum Live in London, where media leaders argued that the rigid, linear model of awareness-to-conversion has collapsed. In today's fragmented landscape, any channel can play any role in the customer journey - offering new opportunities for creativity but also new challenges for measurement, planning and investment."

"I think the biggest change is the lack of rigidity, which I think is a good thing in that sort of classic funnel marketers always like to talk about. What we're seeing, or have seen over the last few years, is that channels can play any role. And that's brilliant from a planning point of view, because it gives us creativity. It gives us flexibility to kind of do more interesting things, rather than the sort of classic broadcast-to-narrowcast targeting that we used to do."

The rigid, linear marketing funnel has collapsed as channels increasingly play multiple roles across fragmented customer journeys. This shift enables greater creativity and flexibility in planning but complicates measurement, media investment and attribution. Marketers must integrate channels rather than assign them fixed funnel stages, reconsider TV's role, and respond to the rise of retail media and influencers. Platform behaviours, such as holistic campaign approaches, push advertisers toward unified strategies. Emerging AI tools are set to influence future planning, demanding new skills and updated measurement frameworks to capture cross-channel effects and return on investment.

Read at The Drum