GumGum has released its Mindset Advertising Report, highlighting a gap between marketers’ belief in mindset-aligned advertising and their continued reliance on identity-based audience targeting. The study surveyed more than 2,000 marketers across the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, examining how advertisers assess consumer receptiveness and the barriers to adopting mindset-led campaign strategies.
The findings suggest that marketers increasingly recognize the importance of reaching consumers in contexts that reflect their interests, needs or state of mind. However, that recognition has not consistently translated into campaign planning practices.
According to GumGum, 81.5% of surveyed marketers believe advertising aligned with consumer mindsets can outperform identity-based audience matching. Another 94.3% believe consumers outside a brand’s core audience may still engage when advertising aligns with their mindset.
Despite those views, 59.8% of U.S. marketers said they would still default to identity-based advertising for their next campaign. The company described this difference between industry sentiment and campaign execution as a central finding of the report.
Mindset Advertising Gains Support, but Adoption Lags
The research points to a challenge for advertisers evaluating how to define and reach relevant audiences. Traditional identity-based targeting organizes consumers around attributes or audience segments, while mindset-led approaches focus on the context and signals that may indicate a consumer’s receptiveness to a particular message.
The two approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However, GumGum’s findings suggest that advertisers who recognize the potential value of mindset alignment may still lack the data, resources or planning processes needed to apply it consistently.
In the United States, 79.4% of marketers rated their brands’ mindset alignment as effective or very effective. Yet the continued preference for identity-based advertising suggests that confidence in a strategy does not automatically lead to changes in media planning.
The distinction matters as advertisers assess whether campaigns are reaching people likely to respond to a message, rather than relying exclusively on predefined audience membership. Mindset-led advertising could potentially broaden the relevant audience for a campaign, although the survey figures alone do not establish that it will outperform identity-based targeting in every setting.
Data Access and Audience Understanding Remain Barriers
U.S. respondents identified several obstacles to implementing mindset advertising. Some 16.6% cited difficulties properly understanding their audience, while 10% pointed to data access and 7.6% cited resource constraints.
These barriers highlight the operational work involved in moving from a broad advertising principle to a repeatable campaign methodology. Advertisers need ways to interpret audience context, translate those insights into media decisions and assess whether the resulting placements support campaign objectives.
The findings also raise questions about measurement. To establish the value of mindset-led planning, advertisers would need to compare campaign outcomes using clearly defined metrics and appropriate testing methods. The supplied announcement does not disclose the report’s full methodology, question wording, sample distribution by market or performance data from live campaigns.
GumGum positions itself as a company focused on mindset-based advertising. Its CEO, Marcus Startzel, said the report shows a gap between marketers’ belief in the approach and their willingness to use it in upcoming campaigns.
Market Landscape: Audience Relevance Beyond Identity
The report arrives as advertisers reconsider how to maintain relevance across increasingly complex digital media environments. AI-enabled tools can help marketers process information and execute campaigns at scale, but reach alone does not establish whether an audience is receptive to a message.
Mindset-based planning is one approach to that challenge. Its practical value depends on how marketers define mindset, what signals they use, how those signals are applied across media channels and whether campaign outcomes can be measured reliably.
The survey provides evidence of marketers’ stated attitudes, not an independent demonstration of advertising effectiveness. Because GumGum published the research and sells advertising technology, readers should also consider the report’s commercial context when interpreting its conclusions.
Strategic Outlook
The next step for advertisers is to determine whether mindset-led planning improves results in specific campaign contexts. Controlled tests, transparent measurement and comparisons with existing audience strategies could help establish where it adds value and where identity-based targeting remains useful.
For advertising technology providers, the findings point to a potential opportunity to help brands turn audience-context insights into actionable media decisions. The report does not, however, establish how quickly adoption will grow or quantify the commercial impact of shifting campaign budgets.
Top Insights
- 81.5% of surveyed marketers believe mindset-aligned advertising can outperform identity-based matching.
- 94.3% believe mindset-relevant messaging can engage consumers outside a brand’s core audience.
- 59.8% of U.S. respondents would still default to identity-based advertising for their next campaign.
- Audience understanding was the leading reported U.S. implementation barrier, at 16.6%.
- Measurement remains important: the supplied announcement does not include campaign-level evidence proving superior performance.
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